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ESSAYS 



SKETCHES 



CAROLINE W. HEALEY DALE. 



have besought the stars, with iears, to si'iul 
1 jKiwer unto me ; " 




BOSTON: 

SAMUEL G. SI]\[PKINS 

1849. 



.7] S3 t2 



Kntei-ed according to Act ol" Congress, in the year 1.S4S, by 

Mks. C. W. H. DALL, 

Id the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachnsctts. 



DEDICmON. 

WHO FIRST NTTRTFEED IN ME 
THE LOVE OF TRUTH 

AXD 

OF GOD, 

THIS VOLUME IS AiTECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED. 



" We noTOT seo the stara, 
Till we oan see naught but them. So ivitli Trtilli . 



litt.ll ypcd/ini)!, .!/</■;<. 
Dec. I. IMN 



CONTENTS 



ESSAY I. 

PAGE. 

The Sabbath. 

ESSAY II 
Truth, 19 

ESSAY III. 
Personal Influence. 25 

ESSAY IV. 
Faith, 32 

ESSAY V. 
The Vision of (iod, 39 

ESSAY VI. 
Insult TO the Host. - 4r) 

ESSAY VII 
Thoughts on Expediency, - - - - 02 

ESSAY VIII. 
TjiY Sister, 62 



vi CONTENTS. 

ESSAY IX. 
Reforms, 71 

ESSAY X. 
Thoughts on War, 87 

ESSAY XL 
A Lesson of Hope for Man from Nature, - - - 05 

ESSAY XII. 
A Sketch from Real Life, ' - 104 



Truth is large. Our aspiration 

Scarce embraces half we be. 

Shame! to sland in His creation 

And doubt Truth's sulKciency ! — 

To think God's song unexcelling 

The poor tales of onr own telling. K. B. Barrett. 



• 'T IS glorious to have ones own proud will, 
To see the crown acknowledged that we earn 
But nobler yet, and nearer to the skies, 
To feel one's-self in hours serene and still, 
One of the spirits chosen by Heaven to turn 
The sunny side oC things to liuman eyes.' 



' Thus much, then, lui- tins book, its heresies, 
If such they be, are charitable ones ; 
For they who read not in the blest beliet 
That all souls may be saved, read to no end. 
iSor bates the book one tittle of the truth, 
To smooth its way to favor with the fearful. 
All rests with those who read. A work or thouglii. 
Is what each makes it to himself, — 
Now, therefore, to her work, and to the world, 
The writer bids God-speed. It matters not 
If they agree or dilier. Each, perchance. 
May bear true witness to ;uiotIier end." P. .1. Bailey 



' The discourse is often niucli better than the man, as sweet and 
clear waters come through very dirty earth.' 

BEN.TAiMiN Franklin. 



THE SABBATH, 

' No heavenly harpings soothe our ear, 

No mystic dreams we share ; 

Yet hope to feel Thy comfort near, 

And bless Thee in our prayer." 

Hebkr. 

Chevalier, the author of a work upon the soci- 
ety, manners, and politics of the United States, so 
popular that it has already passed through three 
Paris editions, and has been recently translated into 
the English tongue, concludes some allusions to 
the general suspension of business and amusement 
among us upon the Sabbath, with the following re- 
mark : ' Nothing, therefore, can be more melan- 
choly than the seventh day, in this country. After 
such a Sunday, the labor of Monday is delightful 
pastime.' 

It could hardly be expected that a foreigner, 
however candid and liberal, should appreciate the 
pleasures of a New England Sabbath, but such an 
2 



10 THE SABKATIL 

assertion as this will call forth many an earnest 
j)rotestation, many an indignant refutal. Our peo- 
ple will be quite as likely to believe that their 
annual Thanksgiving is not a day of festival and 
frolic, as that the recreations of their Sabbath are 
not the subject of week-day preparation, and antici- 
pated with an eagerness which gives a new zest 
to their daily labor. In the country or the town, 
it invites us alike to a calm but sacred joy. The 
farmer rises at the same hour as on other days, but 
his peculiar cleanliness, and a somewhat extraordi- 
nary attention to his toilet^ first remind his guest 
that this is the day which he ' delighteth to honor.' 
There is an unusual silence in the house. His men 
are sitting down with their Bibles, or the last ncAvs- 
paper, — a paper most frequently of a devotional 
character, — spread out upon their laps. The first 
breaking of the sunlight over the eastern hills gilds 
with a softer beauty the tall forests in the distance, 
or glimmers ^with a calmer brilliancy upon the sur- 
face of the silvery river, than upon other days, 
when the freshest and most romantic stream serves 
only to supply the mill, and the cool woods echo to 
the stroke of the falling axe. The breakfast table 
is loaded with the bounties of the season, and if no 
audible voice sends up the few words of thankful- 
ness to the Creator, we see in the reverent decorum 



THE SABBATH. 11 

-vvitli which the farmer and his family place them- 
selves at table, the all pervading influence of a 
grateful spirit. The meal is despatched without the 
noisy bustle which attends it on less favored days, 
and while the housewife or an attendant quietly 
removes the cloth, the younger children cluster 
together on the carpet to give the parting glance to 
their catechism or their hymn ; the elder retire to 
prepare themselves for their classes, and w^e, per- 
haps, steal out to the warm air and life-inspiring 
sunshine, to thank God that we arc allowed to look 
upon another Sabbath. 

Oh, how much brighter, dearer, holier, is Nature 
herself upon a day like this ! There is no noise of 
vehicles upon the road. No merry voices uplift 
themselves in the neighbouring fields. No loungers 
are to be seen in the half open door-way of the 
neat farm-house. The winds have hushed their 
commotion ; the tall trees worship motionless, and 
even the violets and the mallow look up to the clear 
sky, while the dew trembles with a new grace upon 
their softly shaded petals, and a fresher, sweeter 
fragrance is breathed up from their pure bosoms. 

Suddenly the distant chiming of the village bell 
calls forth the little ones, and hand in hand, with 
smiling faces, and ever and anon a half indecorous 
gambol, they wind along the grassy road, eager to 



12 tTtl2 SABBATlt. 

clasp again, with brightening eyes, the hand of their 
affectionate pastor, or to welcome with dimpling 
cheek the presence of their dear-loved teacher's 
lips. The hour devoted to tliese unfolding spirits 
is quickly passed, and the church fills with maturer 
forms. The foot which falls responsive to the shrill 
whistle of the teamster, as he encourages his lazy 
oxen, is still as that of the slippered Circassian, when 
the hardy laborer uncovers his head beneath the 
sacred roof. Lips which are parched by daily ex- 
posure to the air and siin, moved by the promptings 
of quick-beating hearts, break forth into songs of 
praise, and are hushed again, like the waves of 
Gennesareth, by the voice of inspiration. The 
dinner, which follows close upon the first service, is 
generally cold, for the housewife, who will not stay 
at home from church to prepare her own meal, 
would hardly feel justified in requiring the assist- 
ance of a youthful domestic, Avho might be benefit- 
ed by the pastor's instructions. As the intermission 
is short, it is hardly over before the solemn peal of 
the bell, echoed along the rocky hillside, and softly 
whispered through the green valleys, calls her once 
more to the worship of her God. The second ser- 
vice is frequently followed by the exposition of a 
chapter from the Scripture, especially intended for 
those who blend in their own persons the simplicity 



THE SABJJATIl. 13 

of childhood and the newly awakened hopes, the 
freshly opening vistas, of maturer life. Evening 
comes on. How lovely is the sunset radiance which 
fills the western sky, gleaming through the wavy 
masses of foliage, and shrouding the very zenith in 
crimson mist! Many an admiring glance does it 
attract from those who have gathered about the 
farmer's tea-table, and many a little one waits rest- 
lessly for the conclusion of the meal, that she may 
chmb to the window, and gaze till her aching eyes 
involuntarily close upon this revelation of her God. 
Then comes the evening hymn, the gathering of 
the family circle, and the relation of the day's ex- 
perience, or of a few stories strongly bearing upon 
practical principles, for the edification of its younger 
members ; and then a psalm or a chapter from the 
Gospels ; and all is still about the farm-house, save 
the flooding moonlight, which seems to five and move 
and have a being. It is the Sabbath night. Can 
this, the only, the cherished interruption of the 
duties, the monotonous labors of the week, seem 
other than a day of calm enjoyment, of rational 
rest V 

Let us turn to the city, that city which worships 
not, like its great prototype of old, an unknown 
G-od, Does not the morning break, even here, 
with a charm which is all its own ? Is the sunshine 



14 THE SABBATH. 

ever so glad, or the western breeze so soft, as on the 
early summer Sabbath? The very clouds in the 
blue heaven, and the leaves upon the trees, seem 
to dance in unison with the happy hearts of the 
teacher and the pupil, as they wend their way to 
the Sabbath school. And does that hour, which 
can never be made too pregnant with interest — an 
hour which ever seems too short — bring with it no 
conscious dehght ? Perfect contentment is quiet 
in its nature ; it does not burst forth in the merry 
laugh, the frolicsome romp, or light and joyous 
bound, and one would think it had spread its mantle 
over our favored city, so still, so sacred in the 
morning light, lie the haunts of business. The 
exchange, the bank, the insurance office, the cus- 
tom house, and the wharf, aye, every thing from the 
city hall to the huckster's stand, is deserted and 
alone. The thousands which throng them during 
the week have left them for the House of God, and 
the stray passer-by is self-rebuked. The air rever- 
berates with the mingled cadences of many bells, 
and all but he have obeyed the answering impulse 
within them. 

The words of inspiration have fallen upon our 
ears ; the voice of the preacher has reached our 
hearts ; and, pondering deeply upon man's duty 
and destiny, we have allowed ourselves to be drawn 



THE SAliBATH. 15 

away with the crowd, scarcely conscious whither, 
till a hum, as of multitudes, startles us, and we 
rouse ourselves from our reverie. We are in the 
Mall ; we are breathing the fresh air as it is wafted 
across the bay ; we are looking up to Heaven, in 
the presence of Nature and of Grod ; but alas, this 
is not all ! The worshipers of Fashion are about us, 
and if the language of smiles and bows, of courte- 
sies and coquetries, be a written tongue, theii' god 
is not an unknown god ; its altar is at the corners 
of the streets. 

Look up, Chevaher, and although 'cards and 
dice, bilhards and backgammon,' are interdicted to 
our sober people, you might almost fancy yourself in 
the gardens of your own Tuileries, so very French 
are the manners and the dress, the hats, shawls, 
nay, even the very slippers of the throng into 
which we have so unwittingly intruded. Surely, 
tliat bright young girl who is numbering her fingers 
so eagerly, is enumerating her imaginary conquests, 
and the dark-haired fop who listens has forgotten, 
if he ever heard, the appropriate lesson of this 
morning's pulpit ? Let us turn from this single 
cloud in our Sabbath sky to its fairer and brighter 
depths. The evening meal has been shared, the 
sun gives promise of a long twilight hour, and the 
working class, — the mechanics and day laborers, 



16 THE SABBATH. 

with their wives and children, — have come up from 
the dark and narrow streets of the city, to inhale 
the cool, refreshing breeze, and to forget what they 
too often think the drudgery of their continued 
existence. Our exquisites have forsaken their fas- 
cinating parade, and we rejoice to see that it can 
be crowded with a far more useful class. It does 
one's heart good to look round, catching the refresh- 
ing smile from the lips of the passers-by. 

See how soberly, yet how pleasantly, this dense 
crowd rolls on : not an imprecation, not a vulgar 
ejaculation, nor an offensive epithet, falls upon the 
ear. Each is absorbed in his own contemplations, 
and it is surprising that so little of the deep satis- 
faction of the pedestrians should find expression. 

The children are gambolling upon the green turf, 
or rolling down the graceful slopes, but even their 
mirthfulness is subdued, and as the evening star 
steals out, and the heavens yet glow with a reflect- 
ed brilliancy, we cannot but sympathize with the 
happy beings who yet linger in the open air. Here 
is an Irishwoman with her clean and stiflly starched 
cap ; — she wears no bonnet — but her eye is not 
bent upon the extremity of a new parasol, or her 
neighbour's highly polished boot ; no, it is upward, 
and thus it is with the crowd. We stand aside, 
and let it pass, thanking God that our people are 



THE SABBATH. 17 

yet natural and unconstrained ; hoping that they 
will never assume the airs of an aristocracy. 

Look round, and the vast area that was so lately 
filled is empty. In returning to our own homes, 
we pass through the quiet streets. At every step 
we hear, through the open windows, a voice, most 
frequently a woman's voice, reading from the Scrip- 
tures, which have been her study throughout the 
day. A group of colored children are sitting upon 
the threshold of one door, repeating to each other 
the instructions of their several Sabbath teachers, 
while nearly opposite sits an elderly widow at the 
open casement where she has been reading. She 
has turned down the leaf, that she may be enabled 
to refer to the text, and while she ponders upon its 
sacred truths her folded hands rest upon the broad 
covers of the Bible. Aye, and in many a splendid 
mansion, where the crimson curtains are drawn close 
and the full light of the chandelier falls upon the 
glowing countenances of a youthful circle, childhood 
and old age and maturity are listening with delight 
to passages from the same holy volume. The father, 
the successful merchant, the lucky speculator, the 
much caring, much enduring man of business, sighs 
as he hears how hardly the rich man shall enter 
into the kingdom of heaven, stroking the golden 
locks of the fair dau^-hter who is readins; to the 



18 THE SABliATH. 

younger children, and fondling thoughtfully the babe 
upon his knee. This is the Sabbath, and who dare 
say that it has passed heavily away, who will con- 
fess that its return is not anticipated with pleasure ? 
Who will not say, that if it be ever greeted with a 
sigh, it is but because it marks the passage of an- 
other week, of a thousand other of 

' Those bright occasionfl of dispensing good. 
So seldom used, so little understood I ' 



II. 



TRUTH. 

I 

' Old men and beldams, in the streets, 
Do prophecy upon it dangerously.' 

Shakspeare. 

^ If a better system 's thine, 
Impart it frankly, or make use of mine.' 

HoEACE, Epis. 1 : 6. 

' What is truth ? ' exclaimed Pilate ; and, as 
appears from the record, never waited for an an- 
swer. Let us repeat the question ; not with any 
reference to disputed philosophies or rival faiths, 
but looking rather upon our individual obligations 
to society. What is more common than a protest 
against the falseness of the world ! It would seem 
as if the very infant in arms might see how this is 
the one sin which underlies all others. How much 
more profitable, then, a heart-protest, entered by 
each man against his own. 

Have you not observed that they who complain 
oftenest and most loudly of the idle words men 



20 TRUTH. 

speak, are they who give these idle words their 
currency, who endorse falsehood for the many by 
accepting it themselves ? Stand among the throng 
of men. Look at the beauty of Absolute Truth. 
Listen to the Gospel, as it denounces ^ whisperers 
and meddlers in other men's matters.' See how 
far the image of God, impressed upon your race, 
is perverted by wilful misdoing. Are you not 
moved to question, ' How can this people escape 
the judgment to come ? What may be done to 
correct this evil ? ' Do you ever ask, does any 
body ever ask, " What can I do to lessen it ? ' 

What is it to be true ? It is not only to speak 
no lies, but to think no unjust thought. To listen to 
no presumptive criticism. To refuse to whispering- 
malice the support of what may have been your 
own well-founded conjecture. To speak no word 
in jest, that earnest may repeat, and in speaking 
falsify. To act with a motive and to an end, in 
the face of the whole world ; your own eye fixed 
on God, no matter whose on you. Always for your 
own highest good, and in that, for the highest good 
of all. 

Nations must be regenerated through single men. 
It is true man does not create, but rather is created 
by, the exigencies of his time ; yet, if you see that 
truth clearly which other men refuse to acknowl- 



TRUTH. 21 

edge, upon you rests the responsibility of its devel- 
opment. 

A false principle is advocated in your hearing, 
but you do not dare to strip it in the speaker's 
sight. A false word is spoken, of your enemy or 
your friend. In the first instance, it flatters your 
prejudice ; in the second, to deny it would be to 
offend a stronger than yourself. A false report is 
devised. The holiest of earth's ties furnishes mat- 
ter for ingenious jesting. You know that the repu- 
tation, the happiness of another lies in your hands, 
but you withhold the word that might secure both, 
because your own ends may be served, or the idle 
fancy of an idle moment gather strength from the 
unrebuked insinuation. Your child begs for an in- 
dulgence ; your friend solicits a favor ; to relieve 
yourself from importunity you promise both. You 
are pressed for information ; your vanity is flat- 
tered ; you suggest what you do not know. You 
call it a suggestion, and the seeming caution gives 
it more authority than the boldest assertion. You 
mingle with an idle circle, and powers which were 
given you for a blessing you turn into a curse. The 
gossip of that circle is a temptation to your imagi- 
nation. It was too dull of itself to live, but, 
retouched by your lively fancy and kindled by the 
fresh interest you bring to it, it is carried farther 



22 TRUTH. 

and farther on its evil way. You call yourself a 
Christian, but are afraid to speak and act as one, 
since that is not, in the opinion of your fellows, 
the highest grace. 

Excuse yourself you cannot by the plea of your 
own insignificance. Remember, rather, on your 
knees, your own God-given power. You have lived, 
not perhaps for low ends, but for none at all. You 
have been absorbed in trifles. Live but half so 
earnestly for truth as you have lived for these, and 
wait for the result. He who has fixed his thought 
upon the noblest unfolding of his nature, has no 
time for petty interests. He will never act unfitly, 
for the beautiful proportion of his whole life will 
invigorate even the moments of his relaxation. The 
healthy frame gives energy to the lifted finger, so 
the living soul gives power to the homeUest duty, 
even the wayside benediction. 

Has your own experience not taught you how 
much a spoken word may do, or undo ? Know you 
not how strong hearts have bent and broken be- 
neath the heavy follies of the false ? 

To woman, to her whom God made to keep fresh 
in man's heart the image of the truth, to her who 
holds in her hand the destinies of coming time, 
such an appeal should not be made in vain. Has 
she echoed the vulgar detestation of Gossip ? Has 



TRUTH. 2S 

she taught her child that God is Truth ? Then let 
her be sure that in her daily converse the false and 
the true be not so indiscriminately mingled, that 
that child shall hardly tell to which her allegiance 
is plighted. If she cannot silence the thousand 
tongues of Rumor, she can, at least, govern her 
own. If she cannot expose falsehood, she can, at 
least, uncover the loveliness of Truth. Her whole 
life may be an open page, that he who runs shall 
read. 

Suspicion shall never fix upon her, for her prin- 
ciples Avill speak through her presence, with a 
power which shall never be misunderstood. She 
will have no need to hide the thoughts, which, we 
have been taught, ' once well conceived, are ever 
freely told ; ' and in earnest striving to keep her 
own heart pure, she will forget to exaggerate the 
failings of others. It is the indolent nature into 
which every meanness creeps. It is the darkened 
eye alone which sees the shadow on the sun. Wo- 
man's heart is strong indeed, but in the embrace of 
truth is begotten of it a strength beyond its own. 
To every labor, every sacrifice, is such a strength 
competent. 

She who has been as generous as just in passing 
her own judgment, need never fear the judgment 
of others. The truth which she has spoken shall 



24 TRUTH. 

acquit her in her need. There was never yet a 
falsehood that some fact might not uncover. Take 
heed to the fact. God will take heed to the un- 
truth. 

Put off even the appearance of evil. If but 
your breath be tainted, Gossip will certify disease. 
It is upon the little evil which exists or seems to 
exist, that she rears her massive superstructure of 
possibilities. 



in. 



PERSONAL INPLUENCIO. 

' To find the medium asks some share of wit, 
And therefore 't is a mark fools never liit.' 

..GbWPEB. 

'Do not ask yourself how .ywi* conduct may 
influence another,' said one not 'Jong since to his 
friend ; ' act for yourself simply ; nothing is so dis- 
agreeable as a I'orson who confesses that really he 
would not be quite so puritanical as he is, but if he 
relax his moral discipline in the slightest, his error 
becomes an excuse for the errors of the many. You 
are a mere unit in a universe of millions ; how ab- 
surd then seems this self-elation ! What an undue 
importance you ascribe to your own influence, when 
you talk of the effect to be produced by your petty 
decisions.' 

This attempt at argument bears a speciousness 
upon its face, likely to mislead a modest but con- 
scientious inquirer. He will dread that egotism 



2G PERSONAL IXFLUEXOE. 

which constitutes the current disease of society ; 
and who will be found to assert that any are ego- 
tists for conscience' sake ? 

Nothing is so contemptible as the purpose of him 
who would render the most exalted abstractions of 
religion and philosophy subservient to his own self- 
ish interests ; who seeks to be great-souled, only 
to be able to exert a sort of magnetic influence over 
the souls of others. If there be error in the -oppo- 
site extreme, surely the greater error is here. But 
he who has sought truth for its own sake, — he who 
has been its patient and unyielding disciple, — may 
safely ask himself in what manner it is most prudent 
to present it to the aspirations of another. He may 
earnestly seek to identify his own with the Chris- 
tian influence, and to realize in his own faith and 
practice yet more than the common conception of 
the law of love. This is but to add another to the 
many incentives to virtue, and this other, in many 
instances, perhaps the most powerful ; for, to a 
delicate conscience no liabihty could be so frightful 
as that of misleading the guiltless. 

Beside, he who has given his best aflections to 
any cause, will be tenacious of its honor ; would 
most naturally ask himself whether one line of con- 
duct may not be more advantageous to its interests 
than another, and would shrink, beyond all tilings, 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE. Zi 

from bringing it into contempt among men by dis- 
gracing it in his own person. 

How many of us constantly refer our deeds, our 
Avords, nay, our very thoughts to some remote influ- 
ence which is oftentimes so indistinct that we ahuost 
fear our knowledge of it to be nought but a platonic 
memory ? How many are bound to us by ties of 
affection and kindred whose moral perceptions may 
be quickened by a living example in their midst ? 

There is no vanity, no arrogance in this. If 
there be an ambition on earth which is pardonable, it 
is surely that which aspires to Uve in man's memory 
as an approximation to all that he most reverences 
in the development of his own nature, as a means 
of leading him to a higher conception of the Divine 
than he has yet known. ' Let me be the instru- 
ment,' it cries, ' and let man perceive the effect 
only in its relation to the Infinite Cause.' 

It is well that every man should remember that 
if he <2;ather not in with Christ, he must scatter 
abroad. A word, a look, a tone of music has 
sometimes wrought a change in character, which 
makes us tremble at the vast amount of our respon- 
sibility. All history is full of proofs that the des- 
tiny of the world has sometimes hung upon the 
magnanimity of a single woman, the stern resolve 
of one soldier, or the weak flijzht of a coquettish 



28 1>EI{S0NAL INFLUENCE. 

queen. And yet these effected only outward re- 
sults ; results which enter not into our calm repub- 
lican calculations ; results far beneath the level of 
those which present themselves directly to our eyes. 
' Look into thine heart and write,' said the Ger- 
man seer, and let each one of us ask himself how 
much of what we are or shall be depends upon that 
which others may do or have done. Many a time 
have the failing heart and sinking physical strength 
been carried to the door of want and sin, pregnant 
with energy and hope imparted by the far-reaching 
inspiration of an Oberlin or a Fry. Many a time 
has the spirit drooping in the path of duty been 
cheered by the memory of some one long passed to 
her last home ; who bore up nobly against greater 
trials, and whose undying influence brings, while it 
flushes the cheek with shame, new nerve to the 
faint heart. Often has the intellect, w^earied in the 
pursuit of political or natural science, grasped the 
pen anew, as memories of De Stael and Somerville 
spoke loudly, that what humanity had done hu- 
manity might yet do. 

Often when beset with temptation, mortality for- 
gets its struggle in calm resolve ; for it remembers 
one Avho, tempted ' in all points like as we are,' 
was yet equal to the command ' Be ye therefore 
perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.' 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 29 

' But I say unto thee,' spoke Jesus, ' that whoso- 
ever shall keep one of the least of these mj com- 
mandments, and shall teach men so, the same shall 
be called great in the kingdom of heaven.' What 
teaching so powerful as that of an impulsive act, a 
noblj spoken word, or the concentrated power of 
a generous life ? 

Not many years ago, a httle child, in returning 
from school, passed through a throng of boys. A 
few steps apart, she saw two, who, with swollen 
faces, uplifted hands, and words of horrible profan- 
ity, disputed some trifling point in the game they 
had left. As with reverent thoughtfulness she gazed 
upon the far off gleams of the setting sun, the 
sound of their voices reached her ear, and curdled 
the warm current in her veins. Timidly she hast- 
ened on, for the boys were much larger than herself, 
and never before had her young nature been shocked 
by the taking of God's name in vain. She could 
do nothing, she thought ; she would leave them to 
God and their own hearts. Again she looked back, 
the noise had increased, and the larger boy had his 
foot upon the breast of his antagonist. ' I cannot 
leave them,' she exclaimed ; ' perhaps they do not 
know how very sinful it is. What if I am so 
young ? ' — and in another moment her hand lay 
upon the arm of the enraged combatant. The 



30 PERSONAL IxNFLUEiNTK. 

steady gentleness of her touch arrested his atten- 
tion. With impatient carelessness he would have 
shaken her off, but a soft voice fell upon his ear. 
' A new commandment I give unto you, that ye 
love one another,' — and then, as his grasp relaxed, 
the torrent receded from his swollen veins, and his 
breath came slower, it added, 'Do not forget it 
again, Jesus said it.' The tears started to the 
boy's eye, — the last glimmerings of day fell upon 
the brow of his young monitor, and ere the eager 
curiosity of those Avho had left their sport at her 
approach could be satisfied, in (^uiet dignity she 
was gone. From her own window the child awaited 
the result. There was no farther play. Awed by 
her simple eloquence, the party separated into 
smaller groups, and while, each with an arm about 
the other's neck, the disputants walked slowly home, 
they spoke of the lesson all had received. ' It 
was very rude in you to speak to those quarrelsome 
boys,' said a hasty voice as the little one kid aside 
her satchel. She did not reply. The warm blush 
mantled on her cheek, as she met the displeased 
glance of a parent, but she could not regret. She 
has since passed into the full glow of maidenly re- 
serve, wiser, perhaps, in regard to the conventions 
of society, but never yet, we suspect, regretting, 
for -it chanced that upon the characters of those two 



PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 31 

bojs a permanent iniluence was exerted, and in 
this she herself saw noble fruits of the seed she 
had thus dropped by the wayside. 

A word of weight is never spoken amiss. If it 
effect not what was intended, it has yet, in the final 
scope of things, a result. As the seed Avhich is not 
quickened in the soil is trampled into and enriches 
it ; so what is spoken to man's heart, if it unfold 
not its energies, may yet contribute in a more indi- 
rect way to their vitality. We talk about men of 
influence, institutions of influence, and we mean 
men and institutions possessing a large funded cap- 
ital. There is a capital which is never bankrupt, 
which is always invested at the highest rates, and 
of this shall we refuse to avail ourselves ? The 
man of most extended influence is he, whose Chris- 
tian character impresses itself upon every spirit 
with which it comes in contact ; who acknowledges 
that his responsibility to society involves a respon- 
sibility to God, and shrinks from no duty, however 
unpopular, which that responsibility may impose. 



IV. 

FAITH 



= Evil is 
Good in another way. we »i-e not skilled in.' 

• the .-shadow which creation cast.s, 

From God's own light' 



F£STUS. 



Among the many words 'which men use oftener 
now-a-days than in olden time, is the 'word ' faith.' 
We hear of intellectual and moral faith, of faith in 
heaven, and humanity, until it 'would seem that the 
reiteration might banish all faltering from our lives, 
as it has already banished all ideas from our heads. 
It is worth while to ask ourselves, whether the 
feeling in the heart bears any semblance to the 
word upon the tongue. Let us look calmly at this 
faith in God, about which we have so much to say, 
and see if it be good for any practical purpose. 

To have faith in God, it is not necessary to be- 
lieve that a direct providence interposes in behalf 
of everv sufferins: individual. Let us admit this. 



FAITH. 33 

because, however dear this thought may be to 
ourselves, there are those who think it conflicts 
with the majesty of the Eternal, and that faith, 
which is needed by every man, should be rooted in 
somewhat which every man can accept. To have 
faith in God, it is necessary only to admit the fact 
of his existence. Evil is negative ; it has no 
infinity, but stretches itself out as a background, 
upon which we may group the attributes of Abso- 
lute Good. It is barren, and can have no agency 
in forming or preserving a world. Only so far as 
spirit removes itself from God of its own free Avill, 
has evil power over it. If we believe, then, that 
there is a Being whose goodness knows no limit nor 
change, who created the first man and gave him 
his home ; must we not also believe that He gave 
him life under certain conditions, which, faithfully 
fulfilled, must ensure its value and happiness ? 

If the world drew its first breath at the bidding 
of Infinite Benevolence, a consistent benevolence 
must Avait upon its daily respiration, for the Infinite 
knows neither increase nor diminution. We must 
beUeve, then, that under the operation of general 
laws, merely, every physical or spiritual discipline 
tends to some desired end ; that although each 
man may not be the especial object of God's care, 
it comes not into the scheme of things, and cannot 



34 EAITH. 

result from any imperfection in it, that unnecessary 
or unavoidable ills should assail any. 

There seems to be a peculiar propriety in looking 
at this matter at a time when, as the conservative 
tells us, all former authority in religion and philos- 
ophy is set aside ; when, as the radical himself 
admits, the most momentous revolutions are occur- 
ring in both ; and when, as the simplest of us can 
see, the unchanging principles of both are more 
important matters of dispute among men, than in 
the olden time were houses, lands, or gold ; when 
states are tottering that have hitherto played ' catch 
and throw ' with the world, as with a child's ball ; 
when ' Crisis ' is written on the face of aftairs the 
world over, and Death makes himself at home be- 
side every hearth-stone. 

No wonder that mistaken men predict the end 
of the world. They find themselves in chaos, and 
look for ' a new beginning.' 

To this ' new beginning ' the essential element 
is a simple, child-like faith. 

The faithful man bows to calamity, but to ac- 
knowledge the source from which it comes ; and as 
the cloud passes, we see only the deeper serenity 
left by the holy shadow on his brow. The man of 
the world loses his money, his friends, or his hold 
on the substantial honors of life, and our ears are 



FAITH. 35 

assailed by bitter wailing. To the lot of the faithful 
may fall the deeper curse of a ' high spirit famish- 
ing ; ' a life nobly led and perversely misunderstood ; 
a great name tarnished by the common breath ; a 
warm heart seeking that it may love, and left to 
throb alone ; a home bereft ; a spirit convulsed by 
the intensity of its own action ; but not a murmur 
ever. He walks on his way as unfalteringly, and 
pillows his head on God's truth as trustfully, as 
when the dream of life was to his young thought 
but one long summer's day. This it is to live, 
seeing things in their true shape, because always in 
the light of God's presence. How may such a life 
be attained ? Does it imply that the soul has never 
faltered, the heart's trust not for a moment been 
shaken ? 

Come with us to the bedside of one whom God's 
hand has touched — most lightly, as it seems to us, 
since it has cut down by her side only the ' ripe 
full ear ; ' one whom the loving might have been 
glad to see gathered to His granary. As lightly 
before, it has touched her, and under what she 
deems the accumulation of her suffering, she al- 
lows herself to sink. Kind friends, near relations, 
wealth, and a long life of usefulness lie before her, 
but in selfish abandonment she turns away, and 
physical and mental energy are lost at once. There 



36 FAITH. 

seems to be no future possible but delirium. Speak 
to her of God, and she doubts. Of her own duty, 
to her it is but a name, since He who has borne 
and still bears heavily upon her soul, will require 
of it, she thinks, no upright action. No, she has 
only to prostrate herself as far as possible, and 
when He sees fit He will lift her up. 

Now turn from her to one widowed suddenly by 
contagious disease, and the mother of a young 
infant and four small children. She is too weak to 
work, too much of a stranger in the city to beg, 
and whence bread for the morrow is to come she 
knows not. Her circumstances have bewildered 
her mind, and it is curious to see how earnestly she 
welcomes the coming of one who will think for her. 
She grasps eagerly the first feasible plan of action, 
and with scarce a possibility of success, applies 
herself to her task. We speak somewhat doubt- 
ingly ; we wonder that she finds energy to rouse 
herself. ' What ever came,' she says with some 
surprise, ' AVhat ever came of folded hands ? Sure- 
ly, God never blessed the idle ? ' and in the fact 
that the father of her children was an ' honest man,' 
she finds incitement to honorable effort. 

We will not pursue her story, but let us, at least, 
repeat her words : ' What ever came of folded 
hands ? ' 



FAITH. 'U 

Not faith. The strongest are not always free 
from doubt. Every great truth is come at through 
suspense and struggle, but it is the duty of man to 
restore himself to loftiest calmness, by living that 
faith he would have. God will never lift him \\]) 
who has wilfully cast himself down. Put out yowi- 
hand for strength, as 3'Ou uncover the cistern in a 
shower, otherwise the Divine efflux is turned aside. 
In proportion as you live a righteous and simple 
life, will you have fliith in righteousness and sim- 
plicity. Suppose yourself tormented by a sense of 
your own insufficiency, — the very sunlight a shad- 
ow to your eye, — life offering no pleasure in the 
future, — your only desire, as you say, to obey the 
last summons. 

There is always sufficiency without you. There 
is always a broad noon, which may be carried into 
the hearts of others by the deepest mourner that 
ever trod the earth. There is duty, if not pleasure, 
for to-morrow and to-day, and as for this waiting, 
' What ever came of folded hands ? ' 

Reunion with those you have lost ? 'No, never. 
This passive endurance of suffering builds up a 
wall of separation between you and them. They 
were not inactive, and with them the indolent can 
have no fellowship. To this your daily service 
must entitle you. You must stand erect and firm 



88 FAITH. 

of yourself, before you can hope to keep pace with 
their healthy souls. 

In anguish, no matter how bitter, man has but 
one question to ask ; not ' Whence has this come ? ' 
but ' How shall it be made a Godsend ? ' What 
harvest shall the soul garner, if it cherish the bitter 
seed ? You have no faith because the fields are 
not already white. This may not be possible to 
you ; but an humble imitation of the foith of Christ 
will be. You can watch and water and weed, and 
God -will give the increase. 

Mourner, who weepest in weakness, never is man 
less alone than in his grief. Rise up and seek 
those who suffer like thyself; impart consolation, 
thou who needest it, though it be but by the pres- 
sure of thine hand. Speak strong and true words 
if thou wilt, and find in that deepest peace for thy 
need. Promises that faltered on thy tongue shall 
possess unfalteringly thine heart. 



V. 
THE VISION OF GOD. 

' The pure in heart shall see God.' 

What is it to see God ? To fix a firm eye upon 
the Absolute Good ; to look with a steady f\iitli 
upon Truth and Love, knowing that they shall 
never change ; to repose in the Eternal Father, as 
children on a mother's bosom, nay, with somewhat 
more than the confidingness of inexperience, with 
the clear-sighted trust of him who 'has proven 
that thing whereof he affirms.' Many an unspeak- 
able gift is in His hand, many a good thing lightens 
the heaviness of our care, and helps us not so much 
through the world as ' over it.' I have seen some 
stand in the exercise of intellectual faculties ; others 
in the value of their own labor ; others, again, in 
the abundance of worldly gifts, yearly pulling down 
their barns to build greater ; and some beside, in 
the sanctity of a home, in the deep sympathy of one, 



40 THE VISION OF (JOD. 

or the blessed, uplifting communion of young hearts. 
But mind will stagger like a strong animal, when 
pressed too far ; the hand will tremble with years, 
or the steam-engine outstrip its skill ; the harvest 
may be bhghted, and they that go up and down 
upon the sea in ships lie calmly with their treasure 
beneath the moving waters ; nay, in the highest 
earthly communion there is somewhat that disap- 
points. As in mechanics the smoothest surfaces of 
glass cohere but do not wholly meet ; so in life, those 
hearts that lie most at peace with God find yet 
projections in themselves, which keep them ever a 
Uttle apart. There is air between man and his 
brother ; and amidst so much which passeth or 
satisfieth not, what shall abide, what give content? 
This vision of God. 

If in any wise our Father in Heaven disappoint 
us ; if at any moment we have loolced on him and 
seen no loveliness, leaned on him and found no 
strength ; trusted in him and been deceived ; then 
in our own hearts is the root of this evil. It is not 
that God can change, but we are never the same. 
It is not that one jot or tittle of his law shall pass 
away, but that we have erected to ourselves a lower 
law which cannot remain. If you would see God ; 
if you would know what it is to withstand in graceful 
repose the heaviest shock of fiite, purify your own 



THE VISION OF GOD. 41 

heart. This was the word of Jesus, and from his 
time to the present every prophet has echoed it. 
Our conception of God will depend upon our faith- 
fulness to the image of himself which he has set 
within us, an image never veiled save by our wilful 
sin. In this body, whose requisitions are often hard 
to meet, he has framed a temple for himself. AVe 
are ready enough to build him sanctuaries ; he asks 
us first to preserve unsullied the holy of holies 
which is the work of His own hand. We are ready 
to send forth preachers ; he demands of us that we 
silence not the still, small voice. We are ready to 
bow before his altar ; his first word is, stand erect 
in your own souls. Would you sanctify the work 
of your hands ; would you give in simple earnest- 
ness the highest law to man ; would you erect an 
altar at which angels might commune ; then strive 
by the attainment of purity in your own soul to 
make transparent to yourself the will of an Infinite 
Purity ; by the discipline of your own heart to open 
a way to the hearts of the people. Familiar to us 
all is the beautiful fiction of that Lethean stream 
which washes out, in its calm and equal flow, the 
memory of pain and sin, which gave in the imagi- 
nation of the Heathen world that peace to the 
troubled soul, which under the law of Christ follows 
the very consciousness of a life well spent. Dante 
4 



42 THE VTSTOX OF liOD. 

shows US his Pilgrim leaving the place of anguish, 
and standing on the brink of its sluggish stream, 
yet forced to bind himself with the reeds which 
grow upon the borders of oblivion, before the tide 
will pass over him. The Holy Spirit, as it flows 
in upon the heart of man, answers not the Chris- 
tian's cry for peace, till, wrapt in humility as in a 
garment, he sees first his own weakness, and so 
clearer by contrast the power of God. 

How shall I see God ? Xo man since tlie creation 
hath seen him fully. How, indeed I Shall I know 
the good if my own heart be evil ? Shall I believe 
in him who heareth the young ravens when they cry, 
if my heart be closed to mine own flesh ? Shall 
I discern Absolute Justice, while power, and office, 
and love of money can silence the tongue commis- 
sioned to put down iniquity in liigh places ? Shall 
I have faith in any reconciliation with God, who 
have never yec been reconciled to my brother? 

Have you felt the length and breadth of that law, 
' Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in 
Heaven is perfect,' but still has your faith failed 
you ? Then must you 2)rove the thing whereof you 
affirm. Prove it in your own soul. If your assur- 
ance of love or peace, long-sufiering, or lofty deter- 
mination, a willingness to die for the truth's sake, 
shall waver, go straightway, and show in your own 



THE VISION OF GOD. 43 

life how these things may be. Warm yourself to 
widest chanty by the pillow of some shivering 
brother ; hush the tumult of your own passions ; bear 
Avith the irritations of your own lot ; be true to your 
own convictions of right, in the face of opposing 
friends and circumstances, perhaps the cowardly 
quaking of your own heart ; and once more you 
shall feel yourself established in the faith. If such 
manifestations are to be found in the limited expe- 
rience of one weak man, the simplest power of 
thought will lead you at once to the unlimited reali- 
zation of this crude virtue in God. Keep his tem- 
ple prepared and He v/ill come and dwell in it. Lis- 
ten, and he will speak. Minister, and His own hand 
shall kindle the saeriiice. 

Men live without God in the world. While they 
breathe his breath, drink in the stream of his boun- 
ty, feed upon the bread of his hand, they turn 
their faces from His image in their souls, and prac- 
tically deny that He is. It is their ' desolation ' 
that ' begins to make ' for them * a better life.' So 
in the worhl will some men exhaust a brother's 
purse, and finding him poor, remember for the first 
time that he has been rich, forgetful of benefits, 
until their sudden removal proves them to have 
been daily bread. Shame on the craven soul that 
waits to miss, before it bends to bless, the Heavenly 



44 THE VISION OF OOD. 

Father! In a wicked and ungrateful spirit, we 
may cast our brother oflf ; but if we close our eye 
never so blindly to the sunshine, it will yet warm us. 
If we deny God's love, it encircles us none the less; 
if we refuse to give we must yet receive. 

Life has cares, wrestlings of the spirit, which we 
must bear and cannot avoid ; it has joy, strength, 
riches which we must seek and may not win ; but 
there is a way of deliverance from each of these 
first, a certain inheritance of the best of these last, 
dependent upon our own will. If the presence of 
God be indeed the peace of heaven, if your heart 
have ever longed for its rest, then open to yourself 
this way, make sure of this inheritance. You be- 
lieve me — for you have had your share of the 
world's buffeting, you have seen strength wasted 
for vanity, money spent for that wliich is not bread ; 
but in the sleep of indolence you put off your salva- 
tion ; know you the hour of your own waking ? 
Work now, for the night cometh — wait now, for 
the time shall be when God's own voice shall call 
vou into rest. 



VI. 

INSULT TO THE HOST. 

' This do in remembrance of me.' 

It was at the close of the fourteenth century, 
when the imagination of the Christian world had 
been taxed to its utmost to find some new horror 
worthy of being charged upon the unofiending Jew, 
that the worn-out cry, the echo of long-past ages, — 
' Insult to the Host,' — ran through the church, 
and the Jew of Brussels, who not only sacrificed 
immense treasures to procure an opportunity for 
the gratification of his hate, but paid for his temer- 
ity by a death of horrid and protracted torture, was 
at least as worthy to sit at the Master's table as 
those who gathered about it only to take bitter 
counsel together in a vain eftbrt to depress yet 
farther a world-persecuted people. Strange, indeed, 
to those who look at the fact in the perspective of 
five centuries, seems the delusion of men, who not 
only thought their unrelenting persecution of the 



46 INSULT TO THE HUbT, 

sons of Abraham justified by God, but supported 
their position by miracle, and asserted that when 
the knife of the circumcised touched the conse- 
crated -wafer, the warm blood of the crucified Re- 
deemer gushed forth. Stranger still seems the gor- 
geous procession that annually, to this day, — we 
speak advisedly, — that annually, to this day, pa- 
rades the streets of the German city, in sacred 
commemoration of the agonized death of the culnrit, 
Jonathan of Enghien. Little need have we, how- 
ever, to check our wonder here ; the nineteenth 
century is scarcely so faithful to the Gospel of Love, 
that it dare sit very long in open judgment upon the 
fourteenth. It is more honorable by far in it to 
investigate its own short- comings, and listen to the 
deep murmur of ' Insult to the Host,' given out by 
the sufi*ering Christianity of the present age. 

In the times of which we have just spoken, few 
Christians seemed to reflect that the spirit of re- 
venge in which they advocated their faith implied 
a deeper insult to the risen Lord than the tram- 
pling of the wafer beneath the foot of the IsraeHte. 
So now, perhaps, there are those who honor with 
their lips and obey with their outward life the law 
of Christ, yet pierce him hourly afresh in their 
inmost hearts. * There is truth enough in England 
to save humanity,' said a moral reformer, not long 



INSULT TO THE HOST. 47 

since, ' if it were but spoken truth.' So is there 
piety enough in Christendom to leaven the five 
races of men, were it but thrown out, crystallized 
in action — not only the action of men in relation 
to each other, but the action of the affections, 
aspirations, and impulses in every heart, in relation 
to its own individual life. Spiritual communion is 
the truest memorial of Jesus, and whatever jars 
upon the soul, destroying its equilibrium and sink- 
ing the spirit below the uplifting love of the Master, 
is also an ' Insult to the Host.' 

' Pray without ceasing,' said the Apostle, and 
there seems something of cant in speaking of spe- 
cial preparation for the Communion. The Christian 
needs to strive continually for oneness with the 
mind of Christ, but he is weak, and there will be, 
though there should not, moments in which the 
lower man will assert supremacy, and the loveliness 
of the Divine Image be effaced in his soul. Nor 
is such supremacy ahvays the passing exercise of 
doubtful authority. Struggle after struggle is some- 
times necessary, before he can reassert himself a 
free man, and then this simple rite, binding, as it 
should, all the followers of Jesus upon earth with 
the spirit of forbearance and the humble love of 
heaven, is a means of liberty. It is chiefly as a 
new means that the Communion presents itself to 



48 INSULT TO THE HOST. 

the Christian, and he Avho is seeking earnestly -will 
not pass by a yet interior aid. "When the spirit is 
too faint to stand upright of itself, the sympathies 
of the church, finding utterance through him who 
ministers at its altar, close about and uphold it, and 
wine and bread become rather emblems of Heaven- 
born joy and strength than death and Calvary. 

It is sad to see how little of truth there is in the 
common estimation of ihe rite. Some of us come 
up to the altar as to the stronghold of a party. 
On the first Sabbath of every month we bind our- 
selves anew to the support of some special doctrine, 
or the extermination of some abominated heresy. 
Some of us come and go, and are not enriched. 
Some of us partake of the elements and murmur 
sacred words, and tune our lips to melody so sweet 
and mournful that its echo in the spirit starts the 
inward tear, yet leave the altar with hearts as 
impatient, and spirits as querulous, and tones as 
rough, as Avhen we came up. The Dove has not 
rested on our souls ; we feel not the encircling arms 
of the Father ; we know not, that having stood 
within the holy of holies, our presence should be 
lowlier, oar rebukes more gentle, our patience more 
enduring, our very footfall lighter, for that and 
many a long day. Thus it is with those who in- 
deed drink of this cup. As the faltering Israelites 



INSULT TO THE HOST. 49 

shrank from the love-hghtcd face of their prophet, 
so the weaknesses of humanity evade the clear 
dayhght of such a presence, while all that is strong 
and good and beautiful in its inward life comes out 
to be strengthened and uplifted and enriched. More 
than once have I seen tlie delicious sky of a New 
England summer bending to meet the joyous green 
of the trees, above the altar where a man venerable 
with years has exhorted his brethren to pledge 
themselves anew, in the cup of the sacrament, to 
support the creed by which they were bound, and 
to combat, so far as in them lay, such as the weak 
judgment of the brotherhood deemed untrue to 
God. More than once in Southern climes, where 
it seems as if the very bounty of nature might 
move men's hearts to widest beneficence, have I 
seen the sacred emblems of suffering love refused 
to the thirsting disciple because ' another commun- 
ion ' had received him. Another communion ! as 
if there could be any communion beside that of the 
Son ; as if the table about which all Christendom 
gathers could belong to any pastor, bishop, priest, 
or church ; as if it had ever been other than the 
proper refreshment of all Avilling hearts ! This 
more than all things do we need to learn. More 
than once, yea, many times, North and South, the 
wide world through, may we all see those who, in 



50 INSULT TO THE HOST. 

tlieir mistaken desire to benefit others, talk much, 
and with strange bustle, about the duties of the 
church, the privilege of the sacrament, and the 
value of piety, forgetting all the while, like some of 
the fourteenth century, to be just to their depend- 
ents, merciful to the needy, or courteous to their 
equals ; to check the idle censure of idler minds ; 
to uproot a starting falsehood ; to call men and 
things by their right names. 

Go up, then, thou who falterest in thy walk, but 
first put from thee every species of unkindness, 
self-will, or indecision ; remember no more the in- 
jury, the irritation, or the accident, which shattered 
thy self-control but yesterday. Prepare the temple 
for the willing spirit. Not of thine own power 
Cometh the indwelling God, but thou canst, at least, 
invite him to thee by the sacrifice of a lowly and a 
contrite heart. Rememberest thou the zealots of 
olden story, who, rushing with profane, intemperate 
haste to the rescue of the Ark of God, fell death- 
stricken as their hands touched it ? Be sure, then, 
that, in thy simple appeal to Infinite Mercy, thou 
keep the balance steadily between earnestness and 
judgment ; that thou open thine heart to the river 
of Love ; that thou bear up to Heaven, on thine 
ascending spirit, the frailties of all the world ; and 
if sometimes thou turn aside and sigh for those who 



INSULT TO THE HOST. 51 

seem to thee far gone astray, let the loveliness of 
thy life win them back to thee and to thy faith. 
Imbibe, so far as thou mayst in these rare glimpses 
of the higher world, the spirit of him who healed 
the wound inflicted in his own defence. Remember 
that his last praj^er was for the salvation of one 
who had ofiended against that law of truth in behalf 
of which he sacrificed his life. Value thy faith, 
but for the sake of it undervalue not the faith of 
others. 



VII. 

THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 

' I always watch the indications of circumstances as they arise, and neter, 
unless the voice of duty clearly calls, press any undertaking against op- 
posing circumstances ; lest, by so doing, I should cross the course, or take 
myself out of the current of God"s providential dealings.' 

Bishop Jebb. 

The above proposition contains a clause which 
begs the whole question for the worthy bishop. 
When the ' voice of ciuty clearly calls,' no right- 
minded man can hesitate ; but the truth is, that in 
a great many people this voice only whispers, and 
that which we hear, may not be audible to our next 
neighbour. No two men are governed to the same 
degree by considerations of duty. Most of us 
modify them to suit our love of ease or our coward- 
ice. One man leaves them on the church steps, 
and another picks up his, like a bundle, every night 
when he returns from his business. Only a lofty, 
enviable few are moved by them, with divine consis- 
tency, at all moments and in all places. Who has 



THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 58 

not heard it said of a call of ceremony or an unan- 
swered letter — 'Oh, let it go, we can attend to 
that at any time ! ' To such a statement we should 
never approximate ; even for trifles there is a right 
time, and if it be our duty to feel an interest in all 
men on account of our common nature, it is like- 
wise our duty to neglect no social convention which 
may serve to manifest it. All the sound common- 
sense of the Saxons has not acquiesced in certain 
forms of life, for centuries, without some good rea- 
son, and until we can furnish better, we are bound 
to comply with their requisitions. It is evident, 
then, that this ' clear call of duty ' had better be 
left out of the question, and the subject considered 
on the usual grounds ; for we may be sure that few 
men will be found to kick against the pricks for ob- 
stinacy's sake, or the mere pleasure of it ; and the 
practical inquiry is reduced to this : Does Expedi- 
ency, as it is commonly understood by men, mean 
any thing commanded by God ? To many of us 
this question will prove of no little importance, for 
if the said bishop be right in his conclusions, then 
our whole lives will have been wrong. 

We know nothing of Bishop Jebb, nor are we 
surprised that others, besides ourselves, have in 
some way connected his name with a volume of ser- 
mons which they never opened. We cannot imag- 



Ott THOUGHTS OX EXPEDIENCY. 

ine that a man governed bj expediency could ever 
write one living sermon, or leave behind him a 
name worthy of a nation's conscious remembrance. 

' If a better state of things is ever to come,' said 
lately the Rev. Andrew Peabody, ' and everlasting 
righteousness is ever to be brought in, it is neces- 
sary that some men should stand upon a higher 
platform than the many, and those who do stand 
there will ahways be exposed to obloquy and deri- 
sion.' Your appreciation of these words will not be 
lessened by the fact, that the word ' expedient ' 
cannot be found in the mouth of Christ, either in 
the original or translated New Testament. In the 
only instance where the word is found in the trans- 
lation, which is in John, where our Saviour says, 
' It is expedient for you tliat I go away,' it might 
be otherwise rendered with equal fidelity, and is 
incapable of any sinister interpretation. 

Those who stand upon the platform of reform 
will be looked up to by those who stand upon things 
as they are, and constitute the public opinion of the 
world. Men look itp^ unfortunately, quite as often 
with envy as with reverence, and say to those above 
them, ' You are up there, are you ? to look over 
our heads ! Poor fools, you had better come down. 
Your thrones of state are inverted pyramids ; see 
how they totter : we are safer here on the firm 



TUOUGIITS OX EXPEDIENCY. ob 

ground.' But the v,-ise man answers earnestl}^, 
' Not so ; we climbed up here not to look over yoii, 
but to catch the first glimpse of the great light 
which breaketh in the east, to bring you the tidings 
of great joy. It may be that we sit on pyramids ; 
but if we sit calmly and peacefully, they will only 
fix themselves more aiid more firmly as they settle 
into the great foundations of human life and duty ; 
and as up here we always breathe the purest air, we 
shall have better health wherewith to heal some 
wounds and bruises than those under us.' ^\.nd 
this is the true view of the case. Many motives 
influence men when they refuse to uphold a new 
truth with the whole force of their already firm 
conviction. Love of ease, love of reputation, fear 
of ridicule, and then, last and saddest, because this 
symptom shows itself in the highest class of minds, 
a W'ant of faith in God's truth in its first germ of 
development, and a fear to lose influence in some 
direction in which they have already served their 
race, by taking hold in another which is either 
unpopular or misunderstood. With the love of ease 
we have no sympathy. ' God meant this to be a 
hard world,' said Dr. Gannett, not long ago, ' and 
it generally is so.' He was right ; God means 
that we shall work for our daily bread, and the 
opposing circumstances wliich make us quail are 



i)G THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 

like sharp edges put into the hands of growing 
children. If we cut our fingers, it is our own 
fault. He means that we shall learn the noble art 
of self-defence, and turn them into weapons of great 
power. Yes ! this may be a beautiful, a glad world. 
The atmosphere which curtains it may glow with 
God's love, the grass which carpets it may be fresh 
Avith the dew of his mercy, and those eyelet-stars in 
the deep blue may be, as the blind child said, only 
the ' God looking through ' to cheer us. But it 
must be, if it answers its end, a hard world. Labor 
should not make it an unhappy one. 

The love of reputation can never he a righteous 
motive. It is a pleasant thing to find that men are 
conscious of honor to themselves in sympathy with 
us ; but the moment we become actuated by this 
pleasure, they catch us in the act, and reputation 
is gone. What is more contemptible than a man 
who always thinks of himself and his ? ' Have you 
looked at the state of your soul ? ' said a revivalist, 
meeting the great Clarkson in the street. ' Thank 
God,' was the indignant reply, ' I have been too 
busy in saving the souls of other men.' Such a 
remark may be abused, doubtless, but few things 
shock us so much as the selfish bitterness of him, 
who sees in religion only a means to save his oivn 
soul from the torments of hell ; or in great truths. 



THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. i^i 

only a new means to enhance his oivn reputation. 
Could we but secure the future purity of our race, 
ought we not to be willing to be buried from man's 
memory in our act ? The consciousness would be 
ever ours. 

With the fear of ridicule all men have some 
sympathy. We hate to put what is precious before 
the swine of the world. W^e care not to hang jew- 
els before senseless blocks. But God, infinite and 
loving, hangs them before our dull eyes, without 
misgiving, and the song which the angels sing about 
His throne as he does so, is, 'Go ye, and do like- 
wise.' If we cannot create in ourselves the trust 
of an Infinite Being, let us humbly imitate it. 

Then comes a want of faith in the germ of God's 
truth. Men of quite common powers are sometimes 
gifted with this faith in a very high degree ; while 
others, who scale the heights of science, and play 
at games of chance with whole formations and sys- 
tems, tremble for that which is greater than them- 
selves. When we see how some men fear to trust 
to infinite power, how they fear to support the truth 
of Him who is founded on a rock, while only two 
or three can be found to help them, we wonder if 
they ever ask how the world stood before they came 
into it ; know they how it was created without their 
help? 



58 THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 

Again, the fear of losing a useful influence, for 
which he is responsible to God, has held back many 
a man from his duty. Shortsighted creatures that 
we are, know we not that men and things pass in 
the main for what they are worth ? The child who 
tosses a pebble into the snowy surge on the beach, 
thinks only of his play ; but no more certainly does 
that widening ripple widen on, till the water laves 
the foot of the very Hindoo with a more rapid mo- 
tion, and the solid earth quivers again, than the 
power of every true man has its whole force in the 
world ; and, spreading before and behind, and on 
either side, shakes the whole world of mind. If 
your influence be worth any thing, no prejudice can 
diminish it. It streams from under the throne 
of God. It may not move some half dozen men 
whom you love, but it will move with all the strength 
it ever had in the direction that God wills. If it 
be worth nothing, and you have been all your life 
deceived, the sooner your bubble breaks, and you 
know it, the better. It must have done so at some 
not very distant day. No timid man ever succeed- 
ed in being of use to the world. Look round you ; 
those whom you most honor are bold men. Perhaps 
they are conservatives ; you do not honor them for 
tliat^ but because in some point they have stood 
boldly and fearlessly before the world, reformers in 



THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 59 

their meek sphere, betterers of the condition of 
those about them. 

It will be seen that where we should have argued 
we hsLvefelt; but oftentimes feelings are but the 
instincts God implants, and far surer than our rea- 
sonings. If we see a man boldly supporting the 
right and failing in it, we know that it is not his 
support of the right which fails, but some falseness 
in him, or those that work with him. Create your 
own circumstances ; it is in your power. Stumble 
over that block of marble, or Uke the patient East 
Indian, with no other tool than your finger nail, 
chisel out of it a form of grace and life, that shall 
cheer both you and your neighbour. And if there 
be any man who, having climbed with hope as far as 
he will, looks now with longing back upon the val- 
leys of repose, and thinks that our earnestness is 
but young blood run mad, let us tell him, that while 
we abhor expediency, standing as a bar at the gate 
of Heaven, we honor wisdom, that wisdom which 
was in Christ, above all things. He never shrank, 
but he never insulted. He never thought of danger, 
but he sought not to make himself obnoxious. He 
held the truth of God too dear to split it on that 
rock. He reverenced the light he carried, and shel- 
tered it from every gust, not hiding it to please his 
fellow-men, but looking to it that it shone clear. 



60 THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 

So far as we are concerned, let our resolution be 
earnestly taken, to speak the truth upon all great 
questions, in the measure which is given to us, 
neither waiting for other men nor seeking to lead 
them. In appealing to this nation in behalf of the 
slave, there are two ways of proceeding. We can 
begin by making the slave-holder enraged and an 
enemy. We can assure him of crimes which never 
entered his thought, and thus effectually stop his 
ears. We cannot wonder that the ignorant but 
really devotional Methodist of the South is angry 
and not penitent, when our Dublin friend, James 
Haughton, tells him that he would put ' God Al- 
mighty up to auction,' if he had it in his power. 
It may be that such things must be said, to rouse 
men to consciousness of their great sin ; but we 
believe it were truer to say, that if he truly realized 
the presence of God in man, he would not dare to 
put the humblest of his colored brethren there. It 
were wiser to begin by stating great principles, by 
calling upon him as a friend, to look at the crimes 
which are legitimate fruits of the institution he up- 
holds. He knows very well that the physical evils 
of slavery are not greater, on the whole, than those 
of freedom to a similar class ; here he cannot be 
argued with ; but, having tried all higher means, 
do not disdain to show him the infinite evil which 



THOUGHTS ON EXPEDIENCY. 61 

has accrued to the white race in consequence of 
slavery, and the great pecuniary loss it has caused 
to the whole South. 

Let him who takes hold of an unpopular truth, 
only to make it more so, beware. Stand back from 
the ark, oh thoughtless brothers ; you are respon- 
sible to God for temper. 

How ungrateful in us to keep ourselves ' out of 
difficulty,' at the expense of the moral life of com- 
ing generations, when those who scorned expedien- 
cy in the past have done so much for us. That 
which we do with a fair wind and tide seems only 
half to belong to us ; another might have done it 
as well, or perhaps bHnd nature brought it about a 
little later ; but when opposing circumstances beset 
us, the individual is roused, and I do what only I 
was born to do. Had Jesus of Nazareth waited 
for favoring circumstances, for public opinion to de- 
mand him, he would never have taught. Christians 
would never have gathered in the tombs of Rome, 
nor Robinson, at a later day, have sought a home 
on our rock-bound shore. Had Columbus waited for 
favorable circumstances, he would have died a fer- 
ryman at Genoa; Ferguson would have watched 
sheep till his dying day; Madame Roland would 
have made puddings instead of epigrams ; and Ful- 
ton would have stopped at collecting drops from the , 
spout of a tea-kettle. 



VIII. 



THY SISTER. 

' Touch her not scornfully, think of her mournfully, 

Gently, and humanly : 
Not of the stains on her ; all that remains of her 

Now is pure womanly. 
Alas ! for the rarity of Christian charity, 

Under the sun I 
0, it was pitiful I near a whole city full. 

Home she had none. 
Sisterly, brotherly, fatherly, motherly 

Feelings had changed ; 
LoTe by harsh evidence thrown from its eminence, 
Even God's providence, 

Seeming estranged. ' 

Thomas Hood 

' Touch her not scornfully,' oh daughter of rank 
and wealth ; her soul is as precious in the sight of 
God as yours, her infant head nestled as close to a 
mother's tender heart, her tottering steps were 
watched as fondly, and the first bloom of her cheek 
was quite as fair. Perhaps — and God forgive us 
that we must so write it — perhaps it was your 
selfishness or ours that made her what she is. Is 



THY SISTER. 63 

she not the tender child whom we sent suddenly 
from our door, when with a confiding heart, she 
begged in the Master's name for a crust of bread 
and a cup of cold water ? Is she not the washer 
woman whom we left unpaid for weeks, or the 
seamstress whom we underpaid? Perhaps — and 
this last is the saddest thought of all — perhaps she 
is the repentant Magdalen, whom in the pride of 
indignant virtue we sent from our roof, when after 
a week of faithful service we discovered that tale 
of agony, which, shameless as she once was, she 
could not bring her desecrated lips to speak. How 
blessed a privilege it is that we cannot know the 
truth of what we half suspect ; if we could but see 
as God sees, our thoughtless hearts might break 
beneath the weight of hitherto undreamed respon- 
sibility. The time has passed by, if it ever existed, 
when the flush upon a woman's cheek, as she looks 
upon a fallen sister, can rightly excuse her from an 
immediate effort in her behalf. It is no longer 
fitting that for modesty's sake she should seem to 
be ignorant of the evil that lies all about her, and 
keep herself free from taint at the expense of a 
ruined band of her sex. The revelations but recent- 
ly made in regard to the state of licentious crime 
in the city of Boston, have roused a few interested 
individuals to warmer exertion, but the assembled 



64 THY SISTER. 

wisdom of the Christian churches has thought fit to 
suppress a majority of the facts of the case, fearing 
to expose this accumulated mass of fearful sin to 
the naked gaze of a young community. We blame 
them not ; they have done the best they knew, for 
God knows that the saddest of the sad problems set 
before every individual parent, and yet unsolved, is 
this : ' Will my child be best protected in this mat- 
ter by knowledge or ignorance ? What can I do 
to save him from this abyss which for ever yawns 
before my eye ? ' Yet we cannot but think that a 
knowledge of individual cases, no matter hoAv re- 
volting, is needed to thrill the soul and wake the 
energies of woman. As the great mass of women 
are situated, surrounded by vigilant friends, guard- 
ed not more by the careful bias of sedulous edu- 
cation than by a natural or acquired coldness of 
temperament and an utter ignorance of opportunity, 
they know little of the trials of those who, without 
friends, without education, without any object of 
love for a yearning heart, in the midst of opportu- 
nity, are the all but necessari/ victims of the indif- 
ference or ignorance of society. The gossip of 
private circles will not enlighten them ; they need 
a body of terrible facts, presented in a religious 
and kindling spirit to their timid hearts. The 
ignorance which prevails is to us hardly less fright- 



THY SISTER. 65 

ful than the -sin itself, and, as we have placed our- 
selves face to face with the latter in all its varieties, 
and felt our blood boil, and our heart throb, and 
our brain grow dizzy, at the indifference of man to 
the ruin he creates, hot tears have been the witness 
to the striving of our soul to attain to some means 
of remedy to be placed in the hands of our own 
sex. Not yet escaped from school, we had seen 
enough of the volcanic elements at work in society. 
We had seen an infant of six years, born in the 
house of sin, systematically trained by its chief 
mistress to the life of one of its votaries, and lured 
on, by such inducements as it could understand, to 
acts of disgusting profanation. We had seen a 
faithful domestic leave a family who had loved her 
for years for the arms of one who, by a pretended 
marriage, mocked her affectionate heart. Then, 
flying from the rebuking smile of his new-born 
infant, we saw him leave her on a bed of straw in 
a damp cellar, thankful for such charity as the frail 
but needy mother of eight starvelings could be- 
stow ; until only her orphaned babe was left to 
appeal to the still warm if desecrated sympathies 
of one who shared with it through life her scanty 
crust. From the number of a religious class of 
which we were a happy member, we had seen a 
young companion, loving her teacher and evidently 



Q6 THY SISTER. 

feeling the refining influence she shared with us, 
lured on by the love of ease to a position fuller than 
the rack of straining agony. A year or two later, 
and more than one who had listened to the dispen- 
sation of mercy, as it fell from the lips of a tenderly 
beloved pastor, in common with ourselves, forfeited 
for ever, without any ostensible motive, her own 
self-respect. And later still, some five years since, 
the spoiler came among our own flock, and the 
child whom we had gathered from the crowded alley 
and watched over with the tenderness of an ' elder, 
not a better,' whose growing indications of talent 
and quickness had gratified our pride, was won 
over to the evil one by the glittering lights and gay 
decorations of an evening ball. Never shall we 
forget the agony of our own spirit as we remon- 
strated with the indulgent mother, who, having 
w^orked night after night to minister to her daugh- 
ter's love of dress, now felt the springs of life failing 
within her, and with a craven spirit gave over her 
soul to death. Never shall we forget our own 
agony, for we knew how that child had been in our 
hands and we had not kept her ; and we trembled 
when we remembered the development under our 
own eye of the passion which had proved her ruin. 
How months before we had seen an article of our 
own dress, useless and fine, a gift and not the 



THY SISTER. 67 

choice of its wearer, imitated in gay colors and 
coarse materials by her whom we were mourning. 
We remember, too, how we talked with her on the 
subject and blamed ourselves in her presence, and 
how we never went again to the place of our Sab- 
bath meeting wearing the simplest decoration, but 
discarded, for her sake, the very few it was our 
taste to wear. Still we could never forget that in 
the infancy of her passion it had gathered strength 
from our example. The doors of the house of sin 
closed on her. Our coming, for we sought her 
there, was watched and prepared for ; we never 
met again ; yet shall there be one last meeting, 
when our own trembling spirit may well dread to 
render in its sad account. This is not all : but we 
will not pursue our own experience. Thus far it 
may serve to show that we have had frequent and 
bitter reason to consider the subject of which we 
speak, and to give some weight to counsel, — the 
result of a personal knowledge of the many paths 
to sin. We have known many ruined, who have 
been led beyond the power of self-recovery in utter 
ignorance of the poison concealed in the flowers 
they gathered. 

But to enlarge on this is not our province. We 
hasten to press upon our own sex the exercise of a 
power which they only too surely hold. Oh woman ! 



68 THY SISTER. 

busy of late in discussing your own rights, turn, we 
beseech you, one longing glance towards this, the 
noblest mission of the first and last of your sex, — 
the power to save souls. 

God-given, it is God-required, and in the flood of 
beauty and blessing that shall pour into your hearts 
as you exercise it, you shall receive your highest 
reward. We know not the sources of many of the 
evils that afflict humanity, but may we not be sure, 
that when you shall be true to yourselves and seek 
only the noblest exercise of your powers, they will, 
should they still exist, be deprived of their sting ? 
As single individuals, you cannot abolish slavery, 
drunkenness, or war, but you can often, in your 
single power, avert the evil of which we are speak- 
ing. 

And, first, a great deal may be done for others 
by a faithful culture of your own nature. There 
is no such thing as concealing what you are ; you 
will pass for what you are worth. Be worth, then, 
all you can, and if from a false delicacy you have 
avoided the consideration of the duties which you 
owe your sex in this relation, from this moment 
devote yourself to them. Seek above all things for 
a healthy and honest power of looking at the sub- 
ject. Have no morbid sympathies with the conse- 
quences of sin, as you see them set forth in fiction. 



THY SISTER. 69 

without any consideration for the victim that you 
encounter in actual life. Look at her, prostrate 
with fatigue and misery upon the curb-stone. 'But 
for the grace of God,' says Baxter, ' there were ' — 
yourself. Try to realize this, and remember that 
your own virtue is not so much your own merit as 
the effect of circumstances over which you had no 
control. There are exceptions to this statement, 
but it is ordinarily so. Above all, consider that 
there are states of mind more guilty than some 
single deeds. We know many young and in inten- 
tion pure, whose minds are ripe for the sophistries 
which at first delude, were they left unprotected by 
circumstances or friends. They have become so 
by devout reading of French and German romances, 
which leave them destitute of distinct ideas of right 
and wrong. The coarse vulgarity of the French is 
perhaps less dangerous than the mystic grace of the 
German, and might act as an antidote on a very 
strong mind. But the latter is rapidly pervading 
even French literature, and you may be sure that 
no knowledge of real life can be half so dangerous 
to young persons as the reading they find for them- 
selves. You must not walk in a charmed atmos- 
phere ; you must be willing to bear your share of 
the dreadful burden of life ; only so can you be- 
come worthy of the joy of Heaven. Be sure that 



70 THY SISTER. 

every thing which God has made holy you keep 
so. Tolerate no coarse allusions, no rude jests, in 
connection with the most sacred hours and aspects 
of life. Let your bearing in regard to them be 
equally pure in the society of your own sex or the 
other. Despise, if you will, this hint to an incal- 
culable personal influence, but you will be mistaken. 
Next to this culture of self comes your influence 
upon the minds of men. Very few of you know 
how great this is ; still less how great it might he. 
Shame has little restraining influence on the profli- 
gacy of men, in the present condition of society. 
And what wonder ? Women have universally con- 
sidered it due to their own delicacy to ignore the 
private delinquencies of those whom they meet in 
society, to treat all agreeable and well-bred persons 
as if they stood on the same platform of moral 
excellence. And yet drunkenness does not leave 
a deeper mark on man than the indulgence of his 
passions, and the most pure-minded woman will 
the soonest detect this. She ought to feel that 
with her knowledge is connected a sacred responsi- 
bility. We would not advise any woman to deliver 
a moral lecture to every delinquent she encounters. 
What she ought to do must be left in every case 
to her own tact and moral sense. To have a clear 
sense of duty in the matter is the first thing need- 



THY SISTER. <1 

ful. Those who are in the habit of listening, in 
the family circle, to the remarks of girls conversant 
with gay life upon the men they meet there, know 
that ignorance cannot absolve them from this. In 
the course of conversation a thousand opportunities 
will occur for the manifestation of strong feeling, 
and that tone of thinking and acting which you 
require in men. Make use of them ; tolerate no 
coarseness nor half-veiled allusions to unwelcome 
subjects ; above all, no jest upon the frailty or the 
folly of your sex ; let the good name of a sister be 
as dear to you as your own. These last are fitting 
matters of personal rebuke. The esteem in which 
he holds the purity of woman is a fair test of a 
man's own purity. You remember, doubtless, the 
cool deliberation with which Byron planned and 
accovipUshed the ruin of one unsullied in reputa- 
tion, matchless in beauty, and recently a bride, led 
on, as he declared, by his ' knowledge of the 
female heart.' Oh, would to God it were a want of 
knowledge ! at least, do all you can to make it so. 
Nor are your only occasions of influence such as 
we have pointed out. Great purity and simplicity 
of soul will impress itself upon your dress, your 
manner, and your whole personal carriage. See 
that it does so : be careful that no fashionable free- 
dom of either stimulate in those about you the 



72 THY SISTER. 

passions from whose fury you are protected, but 
which will nevertheless be vented afterward upon 
some other less fortunate, but, as God knows, often- 
times more innocent, than yourself. Next in im- 
portance comes a careful regard to the consequences 
of every action. Send no beggars from your door, 
however unworthy, hungry, or cold. God gives 
you not your deservings. Be sure that you do not 
press a fellow-being to the brink of sin otherwise 
undreamed of. Give up your foolish pride in mak- 
ing bargains ; seek not the washerwoman or the 
seamstress whom you can beat down in %oul as well 
as prices, until you have determined to give her 
what her work is fairly worth. If your income be 
small, direct your economical propensity to your 
own dress, the indulgence of your palate, your 
many idle hours. Do not overivork and underpay 
those who serve you, even though their ignorance 
or fidelity give you the power. Above all, pay 
punctually for all service, especially such as is 
rendered by those not under your roof. You know 
not how often the degradation of a mother has been 
the result of your careless forgetfulness of her dues, 
or refusal of her entreaty for help to her starving 
little ones. You will find this out if you conscien- 
tiously look in the right direction. 

Above all, should it be your blessed lot to minis- 



THY SISTER. iy> 

ter to a penitent, he careful tiiat you minister 
strength and peace and a higher Ufe. Turn her 
not away from your door in mistaken righteousness ; 
jou will not be sullied by printing a holj kiss upon 
her careworn forehead. If you refuse her honest 
employment, she must go (jack to the life she 
loathes, for the instinct of self-i)reservation im- 
planted by God affects her less through the soul 
than the body, and, profaned as she has already 
been, lier whole nature will cry out for l{f<> rather 
than holiness. 

An irrepressible sadness comes over us as we 
close these pages. We think we hear many voices 
as one exclaiming, ' How inadequate to the desired 
result are the means pointed out.' But could we 
once see every woman who moves in what are 
called the respectable circles of society actuated 
by a pure heart and deeply responsible insight, the 
power of such means would be acknowledged. If, 
however, we have brought the subject closer home 
to a single heart, the earnestness of our appeal has 
not been entirely thrown away. 



IX. 

REFORMS. 

' For he knows the people Usten 
WTien a mighty spirit speaks ; 
And that none can stir them duly, 
But the one that loves them truly. 
And from them his impulse seeks.' 

Charles Mackat. 

' Give me but a point whereon to rest, and I will 
move the Avorld,' is the cry of many in our times, 
not less than of the ancient mathematician. ' Move 
it where you stand, mistaken one,' is the only possi- 
ble reply. And this reply, how often must it be 
repeated ere it sink deep into the minds of men ? 
ere they recognize the mandate of Providence, that 
here and now, in spite of circumstances, and with 
available means, they must work for the welfare of 
the race, if work they will ? Why find fault with 
the spirit of the age, oh tyro in philosophy or let- 
ters ? The age is what you make it ; ■ — the aggre- 
gate of yourself ; — and truly, if there be any one 



REFORMS. * ii> 

thing for which you ought most devoutly to thank 
God, it is that He has permitted you to breathe 
its atmosphere, and receive as an inheritance the 
very ideas after which your ancestors of the third 
and fourth generation groped as for hid treasure. 
The minor planets revolving closely in our rear, shine 
bright and beautiful in the still summer night, and 
are never confounded with each other ; while in the 
depths of wider space whole clusters of magnificent 
creations, each larger than our central sun, make no 
other impression on the retina than a tiny cloud, a 
mere breath of morning mist. So in the night of 
past ages, while the mass strove for bread and 
clothes and homes to dwell in, here and there an 
isolated individual has seized an idea, a fact in sci- 
ence, an intuition of the soul, and twisted it into a 
halo for his own head, which shall be luminous while 
the world stands ; but in the broader field of our day, 
great thoughts, great facts, great intuitions, any 
one of which would have constituted an ancient sage, 
are become commonplace, jostle one another in the 
street, and crowd impatiently before us, till we call 
them clouds, and turn our bewildered eyes towards 
those luminaries whose merits are ascertained, and 
which are sufficiently small in number and limited in 
extent to be wholly within the compass of our vision. 
Thousands of us mortals are now struggling into 



<(j HKFORM.^. 

light and lite, and, insect-like, arc undoubtedly to'- 
become the scavengers of creation, freshening the 
moral atmosphere, and clearing t le streams of 
thought for generations yet unborn. Let us be con- 
tent to do this ; let us esteem it a most wortli y voca- 
tion, thus to assist God and the good angels in 
bringing about the long desired millennium ; and 
Avhile so many more stand with folded arms at the 
fountain of reform, scornfully looking on. or busying 
themselves just enougli to trouble the waters for 
those who would drink of the l)road stream below, 
surely it befits us to inipiire in what spirit and man- 
ner we must work, if work we will. In order to 
clear the way for our argument, we must take up 
tlie popular movements of the day in connection 
with a certain state of mind, prevailing to a far 
greater extent than we could wish among the au- 
thorized leaders of public sentiment. 

And the strength of the impulses which have 
led to recent philanthropic action cannot be esti- 
mated from a better premise than the fact that 
they have swollen and burst forth rather in despite 
of those to whom they looked for aid, than from 
any encouragement thence received. Slaves groan 
in their chains, drunkards quarrel in their cups, 
the strong men of rival nations go forth to rob one 
another, the miserable woman of the crowded city, 



REFORMS. 77 



cheated out of the just Avorth of her womanly craft, 
sells her virtue to buy bread for her children ; so- 
ciety pets and honors him who buys it, and crushes 
her like a worm beneath its foot ; and still the mass 
of men look on and say, ' We cannot free the 
slave, we dare not close the grog-shop, we will vote 
for the defenders of the war, we ivill buy clieap 
clothing, and hold out no hand to help the sinking 
seamstress, — nay, we will keep ourselves hi good 
fellowship with the seducer ; for all you wlio have 
interested yourselves in these matters of reform, 
have gone too far. You are fanatics, all of you, 
as pestilential as the very curses yoxx undertake to 
remove. Beside, abolition is not a gospel ; peace 
is not a gospel ; temperance is not a gospel ; but 
these ' three are one ' in the Gospel of Christ. We 
believe that; we teach that ; it includes all these. 
Have but a little patience, and moral reform itself 
will be the natural and beautiful fruit of its wide 
diffusion.' 

Patience, indeed I we have listened long enough 



to this, and would hardly have borne with it thus 
far, but that in our earliest maturity, while anxious- 
ly seeking out our duty, we shared this error long 
enough to learn to pity it, to feel convinced that it 
is sincere, and endeavour to remove it. How shall 
the Gospel of Christ be ]n'eached, so that it mav 



78 REFORMS. 

impress the listener with a true view of modern re- 
form ? How did Christ himself preach it ? Did 
he stand amid his disciples putting forth cold gener- 
alizations, and ministering to the self-complacency 
of those whom conscience had just begun to trouble 
with the (j^uestion, ' Are ye faithful to the light that 
is in you ? ' Not so. It is especially remarkable, 
in the history of our Lord, that no one, who came 
to him vfith the question, ' What shall I do to be 
saved ? ' was astonished by a new philosophy, or 
bewildered by any exhibition of his own supernatu- 
ral wisdom. To the rich man, eaten u}) with covet- 
ousness, he said, ' Sell that thou hast and give unto 
the poor.- To the lawyer, who adhered to the ver- 
iest tradition of the Pharisee, ' Show mercy even 
unto the Samaritan.' To the tax-gatherer, fat with 
unjust gains, ' Exact no more than is appointed you.' 
To the soldiers, fierce and mutinous, ' Do violence 
to no man ; neither accuse an}^ falsel}^ ; bo content 
with your wages.' To those v/ho cried out for mir- 
acles, and determined to accept no other proof of 
divine power, ' There shall no sign be granted you ; 
if ye believe not Moses and the prophets, neither 
would ye believe though one rose from the dead.' 
To the Pharisees, fringed and phylacteried, ' Hypo- 
crites and vipers, so far as ye exalt yourselves, so 
far shall ye be abased." To his own disciples even. 



REFORMS. 79 

when they presumed to decide upon the faith of 
their neighbours, ' Forbid them not, ye know not 
what spirit ye are of.' Neither did he cease through 
fear of offence ; for when, having heard the strong 
language addressed to the Pharisees, the lawyers 
exclaimed, ' Master, in thus speaking thou reproach- 
est us also,' he no longer left the matter doubtful, 
but, in clear, bold words, he answered, ' Wo unto 
you, laivyers ! for do ye not lade men with burdens 
grievous to be borne ? ' 

Let no one mistake us ; we know of no reformer, 
thus far, worthy to unloose the latchets of the 
Lord's shoe, but it seems to us that the whole tenor 
of his teaching toward those who came to him was 
full of the strictest personality. ' Ask not light of 
me,' he virtually said ; 'be but faithful to that 
which is within you, and there shall be given unto 
you whatever you may need.' We cannot doubt 
what his word would be were he to stand face to 
face with a slaveholding people ; and when we see 
the pastor of an indifferent congregation lifting the 
voice of prayer in the house where he has thrown 
back the slave to his chains, the drunkard to his 
delusion, the mothers and wives of warlike nations 
to hopeless bereavement, and the miserably under- 
paid women of the cit}- to sin and shame, with a 
graceful compliment to the aristocracy that they 



80 REFORMS. 

have dona so )nuch, our hearts would sink within 
us, but for our faith in One that is 'higher than he.' 
Should he not have striven to stir the spirit of that 
people to a wiser reform that any yet undertaken 
by men ? Did he fully believe his own Avords, did 
he feel entirely confiilent that his whole people w^ere 
of one mind in this matter, he were bound by the 
most sacred of ties to do it ; for, few in number as 
they are, they far outnumber tiie primal apostles, 
and might do a great work for their race. It is 
one of the most singular signs of the times, that 
few men speak out their convictions where they are 
most needed. We long for a teacher Avho shall say 
to the spiritualist, ' Have faith in your brother man. 
If your life be led by divine light alone, do not 
prevent the blind from feeling their way to Heaven. 
Reverently permit the cr'qyple^ if you think him so, 
to lean upon his staff. Above all, cease to scorn 
the emblems and tokens of religious faith, con- 
densed into popular forms. Bless them for what 
they have been to the race, and to you. Live with- 
out them, if yon will, but remember that it was hy 
their aid, or through the aid of influences growing 
out of them, that you clim])ed to the spot where 
you now stand.' We long for one wdio shall love 
the bigot into freedom, and say to him, ' Stand 
back, and, like your Master, judge men by their 



REFORMS. 81 

fruits. It may be you will meet company in 
Heaven you Avill be no little surprised to see. At 
all events, souls slain by your anathemas are steps 
by no means safe whereby to climb. But one soul 
is wholly yours; have you done your best for that?' 
Above all, it has pained us to see those who have 
in their hands the religious culture of the young 
shrinking back from a late movement made by hun- 
dreds of their number to secure the more careful 
protection of a growing generation from the hidden 
vice of a city life, — shrinking, forsooth, because 
' if we be patient and preach the Gospel of Christ, 
moral force and self-respect will be a legacy we 
may well bequeathe our children, without the in- 
terposition of the guardians of the law ! ' If we 
preach the Gospel of Christ ! But whence springs 
a movement like this ? whence comes the fast a^vak- 
ening sense of the community to sin and shame of 
every sort, if not out of the Gospel of Christ ? 
Think you that the spirit of reform will be devel- 
oped silently, as the seed germinates in the earth ! 
Ay, so it will, but you must remember that it 
Ijerminates only in the dark and silent earth. It 
bears fruit in the full light of day. Look into the 
hearts and minds of men, and you will see that this 
seed of Christ has fitly germinated in silent medita- 
tion, and with many heart-throbs has shown, first the 



82 REFORMS. 

blade, then the ear, and now what shall we expect 
but the full corn in the ear ? And, again, would 
you make this into bread for the people, it must be 
with much bustle, and with the noise of many mills. 
A false reproach has been many times thrown upon 
the advocates of modern reform. It has been said 
that in their fanaticism they have become men of 
one idea, devoured by their own zeal in behalf of a 
hobby well-nigh ridden to the death, and that such 
is not the true spirit in which to undertake a re- 
form ; but that from the Gospel of Christ an all- 
pervading grace should come, or, at least, our three 
prominent reforms be unfolded with equal power. 
Look at the facts, and you will find them to be in 
accordance with this theory, in no wise bearing out 
the reproach. Few reformers of our time are men 
of one idea. Those who have taken the highest 
stand in behalf of peace and abohtion have done 
their full share for the cause of temperance, and if 
they have given their strength rather to the first 
two upon the list, it is not because they consider 
these a higher work, but the work most needing to 
be done. Conservatives are ready to take hold of 
the temperance reform. No Christian man can 
live in a city and not perceive its importance, as 
well as that the spirit of Christ is with it. But a 
large class of men might study the Bible many 



REFORMS. 83 

years and not perceive in it that antagonism to 
slavery and war which actually exists. How many 
Christians believe that Christ could not have smiled 
on the Revolutionary War ? We should not like 
to press the question. 

There is no modern reform that we take so little 
interest in as the movement in regard to the rights 
of women. It is true that there have been moments 
in our life when we would have given worlds to have 
sat for an instant on the bench, to have thrown one 
vote in the national assembly, to have spoken one 
hour at a caucus, or have held a governor's com- 
mission just long enough to freely resign it. But 
while the hot torrent of our blood asked for this, we 
never for a moment supposed that the court-room, 
the council-hall, or the caucus was a proper place 
for us. We only felt that if the men of our country 
had dwindled into caitiffs, it had the more need of 
her tuomen. The business of our countrj^ and our 
age, it has been most truly said, is to organize the 
rights of man. One of the holiest of his rights is 
to find woman in her proper place. It is he who is 
robbed by a wrong condition of things. We doubt 
very much whether Providence ever intended that 
women should personally share the duties of the 
commonwealth. We feel that this is utterly incom- 
patible with the more precious and positive duties 



84 REFORMS. 

of the nursery and the fireside. But we long for 
the time to come when a finished education shall be 
every woman's birthright ; when the respect of the 
other sex shall be her legitimate inheritance ; w^en 
the woman of any rank will be able to obtain a 
livelihood for herself or her children without over- 
tasking the generosity of man ; when she shall no 
longer find herself, even for a moment, a tool or a 
plaything. We would willingly listen to her voice 
in the religious assembly, for we have seen the soul 
of a ' sister friend ' more exquisitely and visibly 
illuminated by the Divine Spirit than that of any 
preacher to whom we have ever listened ; and we 
are not surprised that in the present state of the 
world a woman's soul should frequently be found 
the fittest receptacle for the love and righteousness 
of Christ. Hitherto the sex has given utterance 
chiefly to its emotion ; not that it is incapable of 
logic or any similar exercise, more than man would 
be if nothing but his powers of expression Avere 
educated, as is now the case with her. While the 
press is open to her, she has less to complain of 
than the race, which wrongs itself by all sorts of 
legalized oppression and sin, which it might have 
checked long ago had man turned his eye to the 
' Utopia' with a more patient attention. 

We cannot expect that people of different relig- 



RF-FORMS. 80 

ious faitli and difterent degrees of culture will al- 
ways enter wisely and faithfully upon any reform ; 
but it is a beautiful and most desirable thing to see 
hundreds of Sabbath School teachers uniting in 
positive determination to check the course of an 
insidious sin, to witness thousands responding to the 
cry for liberty. What if your own words, written 
to the same end, be face to face with those of a 
spirit which you condemn. You are responsible 
only for what your own lip speaks, and perhaps 
your w^ord may calm the fever some other lias 
kindled. But if you would move the people now, 
it will no longer answer to stand apart from them, 
saying, ' You are altogether wrong.' If your head 
decides better^ your heart must beat the same. 
You must join the onward movement, for no one 
will look back to see what becomes of you, or listen 
to your complaints. The spirit of modern reform 
seems to us the natural and welcome unfolding of 
Christ's Gospel, and his moderation is quite as 
nearly attained in this as in any other specific 
movement. Does the church come very near to 
Christ's ideal church ? and yet, who leaves it on 
that account, or, of the few who do, how few ac- 
complish as much for their race as the hardy spirits 
who remain to labor and protest ? We look for a 
still higher reform than any yet begun. We long 



86 REFORM'S. 

for the time when men shall perceive that religious 
faith^ and not religious beliefs is what God requires 
of man ; when the controversialist, if he survive the 
era, shall be content with stating his own affirma- 
tive ; and when the only battle-ground of theology 
shall be found in the mind of the reader. We long 
for the time when the question shall be — ' What 
spirit are you of ? ' and no longer — ' To whose 
communion do you belong ? ' ; when Christ shall 
have become to all men not only nor chiefly the 
Head of the Church, but the true Son of God, the 
holiest pattern of humanity. 



X. 

THOUGHTS ON WAR. 



' Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of 
God.' Matthew, 5 : 9. 

' Like the black and melancholic yew-tree, 
Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves, 
And yet to prosper ? ' 

Webster's White Devil. 



Embosomed in a quiet country town, with the 
roads in a state that prohibited locomotion, even to 
an idea ; absorbed in the famiUar duties of a house- 
keeper, we had, for weeks together, nearly forgot- 
ten that our country was at war. . Suddenly an 
irruption of city newspapers broke in upon our 
tranquillity, and, presenting to our eyes the horrid 
details of the recent taking of Vera Cruz, demanded 
of us exulting sympathy in our country's success. 
Success I In what ? The question moved our self- 
ish heart, and we felt conscience-stricken that we 
had proved so wholly false to our faith in human 



88 THOUGHTS OX WAR. 

brotherhood as to forget the poor Mexicans even 
for an hour. 

Morning after morning had dawned upon us witli 
its skj of softest blue, as we Hstened to the soft 
breathings of the wind through forest-tops of ear- 
liest, tenderest green, or to louder wailings, when it 
])rushed the bare branches of fruit-trees, that seem- 
ingly despaired of summer. 

Hour after hour had we watched the disappointed 
birds, who unfolded, again and again, in the warm 
noon, their summer plans, and forgot, again and 
again, in the chill winds of evening, that they had 
ever thought of love or marriage. Children played 
merrily beside the road whenever we ventured forth, 
and the solemn tolling of the bell, as one who died 
peacefully on the bed of sickness was carried to his 
home under the village sod, did not remind us of the 
distant graves of slaughtered fellow-men. Once, 
when we passed a careless school-boy bearing a 
string which ran through the still throbbing breasts of 
a dozen household robins, and again, when a sturdy 
farmer came forth from his humble home and threat- 
ened with his strong arm the well grown miscreant 
who had shot a trusting ' pewee ' that had built for 
years beneath his porch, and gladdened with its 
music the hearts of the little ones whom he had 
since committed to God, a thrill shot through our 



THOUGHTS OX WAK. 89 

bosom, and we asked in painful prayer of our Fa- 
ther in Heaven, ' Oh Thou who knowest the hearts 
of men, tell us why women who weep for the red- 
breast, and men who defend the ' pewee,' see beauty 
in a Paixhan gun and honor in the soldier's voca- 
tion.' 

Perhaps we ought not to forget how early our 
childish love of color and sound was gratified by 
the meagre review ; how often nursery rhymes and 
ancient Bible stories, the melody of Herodotus, the 
stern narrative of Xenophon, the logic of Thucyd- 
ides, the anecdote of Plutarch, the eloquence of 
Caesar, and the manly prose of Tacitus, all helped to 
mature in us an unhealthy admiration for the hero- 
ism of past ages. How much farther has the name 
of Bonaparte travelled, marshalled as it is by fear, 
than that of Howard or Wilberforce, heralded by 
love ! Ill tidings travel fast, say the proverb and 
the poet, and so, in truth, do bad influences ; and 
when we remember that it is now eighteen hundred 
years since the Gospel of Peace was preached 
among men, and not only preached, but presented 
tangibly to them in the life of Christ, it is only 
through prayer that we gain strength to hope ; and 
it strikes us, that if God had ever grown impatient 
of man, or swept him away on account of sin, we 
should not now be here to ponder this matter. And 
T 



90 THOUGHTS ON WAR. 

our forgetfulness of our national sin — we shall not 
easily pardon ourselves for that, and yet how many 
are as culpable as we ! Responsible men have, said 
in our hearing, ' We have been so busy with our 
own affairs that we have actually forgotten our 
condition, until we found ourselves forced to pay a 
tax upon our newspapers, to support this accursed 
war.' Alas ! that we should feel most what touches 
our least important possession ! The riches of this 
world, that thieves may break through and steal — 
what are they to our eternal inheritance, incorrup- 
tible in heaven and on earth, which our sympathy 
with this war, the popular cant, the slang of the 
newspapers, our barbaric ideas of glory, and our 
fears of treachery to our government, are constantly 
filching from us ? The friends of peace have some- 
times said of the present war, ' It is as good a war 
as ever was fought.' We understand their position, 
but we deny the fact. Wars have been fought 
between nations of apparently equal strength, for 
the supremacy of an idea, when neither nation was 
civilized enough to recognize its moral force and 
trust to it. Wars have been fought for rehgion, 
with sincerest faith on both sides, but with igno- 
rance yet greater than faith, to excuse the sin. 
Wars have been fought for the recovery of a right- 
eous possession, when moral force has conquered 



THOUGHTS ON WAR. 91 

even on the battle-field ; and if we say of these 
wars, as we do from our heart, that they were bar- 
barous, sinful, offensive to God, and agonizing to 
man, excusable only in the infancy of the race, 
what can we say of a war like this with Mexico, 
where one party fights from filthy lust of lucre and 
craving of popular applause, from desire of posses- 
sions which it cannot use and must in time relinquish 
to its enemy, and the other from long habit, from 
ignorance of a better way, from fearful despair and 
the pressure of civil dissension ? We care not for 
the expense of this war. If it would but touch the 
people, we could rejoice at the expenditure of a 
million a day ; but we are surprised at the apathy 
of our money-loving people in regard to it. What 
would have been thought of the senator who had 
proposed, during the late session, to raise by tariff 
or forced loan seventy millions for the starving na- 
tions of the Old World ? Yet how much better 
to scatter corn in Dublin, Hamburgh, Mayence, 
and Vienna, than to scatter hmbs over the table- 
lands of ignorant and degraded, if of offending 
neighbours I 

What would have been thought of him who had 
proposed to raise, at home or abroad, the sum of 
seventy millions to strengthen the hands of the 
Mexican government, to disseminate the means of 



92 THOUQHTB ON WAR. 

common education among its people, to scatter 
through its borders a band of Protestant missiona- 
ries, to instruct its young men in improved methods 
of mechanical labor, or to frame for it, with its own 
consent, a practicable form of republican govern- 
ment ? And yet, upon a scheme like this, under- 
taken with loving, trusting hearts, the Infinite Fa- 
ther must have smiled ; and had our bells rung in 
honor of it, choirs of angels had echoed back the 
true rejoicing. Nay, more, — in thousands of ways 
the Holy Spirit had descended on them that gave 
and them that took. 

There is very little doubt, that if this war had 
been conducted on American soil, it would long ere 
this have ended. We should not have been ashamed 
to have bought or begged a peace, had it been our 
own fields that were laid desolate, our own harvests 
that were scattered. 

An American, writing from the scene of war, 
relates, that after the taking of Yera Cruz a Mex- 
ican gentleman showed him over the splendid ruins 
of the governor's house. Near the door, a portion 
of one of the rooms had been torn away. A few 
minutes before, a Mexican mother leaned against it, 
caressing two fair sons ; the shell that shattered the 
wall sent them, loving and united, into the presence 
of their Heavenlv Father ! What minded feelinajs 



THOU(iHTS ON WAR. 93 

must have swelled beneath the courtesy of the 
Mexican as he pointed out the spot to an American! 
'Ah yes ! ' exclaims some one at our side, 'but then 
you must consider the fatal impersonality of war ; 
it is not an individual, but the government, which 
commits these atrocities.' Fatal impersonahty, in- 
deed ! No shuffling, friends and brethren, in the 
presence of your God. You voted for the war ; 
1/ou controlled and modulated the tone of the press ; 
^ou gave appropriations ; finally, ^ou preferred 
treachery to God and heaven, to seeming treachery 
to the American government, and you volunteered 
to serve in the American army. Is this war to you 
any impersonal thing ? God knoweth. But to us 
there is an aspect of war yet more shocking than 
that of the field of slaughter, heaped with bleeding 
dead, with wounded men in every variety of gasping 
distress. American women ! what think you of the 
horrid crimes, inseparable from tvar^ as military 
men all tell us, committed by the husbands and 
brothers of our love, in this Mexican campaign ? 
Can you ofier your flushed cheeks in affectionate 
welcome of brutes and ravishers fresh from their 
abandoned life ? Wilt thou own thyself less scru- 
pulous, oh maiden ! who mournest thy beloved, still 
absent there — than the rarely reflecting officers, 
shocked at the enormities of their troops ? Better, 



94 THOUGHTS ON WAR. 

far better, to die on the field, oh soldier ! than 
return to the women who have loved thee, with the 
stamp of excess, of vice, on thy bloated brow and 
passionate lip. Most terrible to ns is the death of 
the soul, hourly taking place where our soldiers 
exult over success. Come back to us, oh beloved, 
deluded ones, with broken limbs and mangled bod- 
ies, and we may still cherish you for ever, but save 
us from encountering your depraved hearts, your 
reeling senses, — the monuments of your dead souls. 
The conquest of Vera Cruz — may God forgive it ; 
may we atone for it in bitterness and holy tears. 
The conquest of the True Cross — may God speed 
it ; may we pray for it with hope and love and tri- 
umphing faith. Conviction cometh, even on the 
battle-field, even in sin, to the bewildered but 
earnest seeker. 



XI. 



A LESSON OF HOPE FOR MAN FROM NATURE. 

* And man ? He awakes gradually to consciousness as from a dream.' 
' Who has not hexrd how the veil of the temple was rent in twain at tho 
hour of the great sasrifice ? Now can the pious soul look into the holy of 
holies, and it is the duty of the artist to reveal God again and again to the 
world.' Fredeeika Bremee. 

Never spoke the sweet voice of the Swedish 
authoress a truer word. Lift thyself up, oh thou 
who despairest, who standest aside from thy brother, 
refusing to act with him, to hve by him, or die for 
him, because all are so unworthy, and in all thy 
trust so shaken. Lift thyself up, and with thy 
face turned full upon the Infinite, strive to recover 
thy departed faith. True is it, indeed, that many 
an irreverent foot, many an impious prophet, has 
stood within the Holy of Holies, since, in the wis- 
dom of Christ, the veil that divided man from his 
Father was rent in twain. True is it, also, that 
many who went to scofi" remained to pray, and those 
who had full faith in their own power while they 



96 A LESSON OF HOPE 

stood without, have been baffled and blinded by the 
sudden light that beamed upon them from within. 
The historian who has meddled with the past has 
had little need of a loving penetration, of divine 
justice, of a wise criticism, compared with him who 
shall come after us. As there rose to his memory 
the incidents of the world's infant history, or the 
drama of its childhood passed act by act before 
him, a simple narrative might satisfy its claims, and 
write his name among those of wise men ; but, re- 
leased from its swaddling bands, history has now 
a higher work to do, and he who writes of the pres- 
ent should be wise unto salvation, should be able to 
resolve the chaos of noble impulses, of divine sugges- 
tions, of great strivings after ultimate truth, which 
bewilder the minds of its noblest sons. Above all, 
he must see clearly that the present is a hopeful 
time. AVith an undimmed eye must he walk among 
men. His arm must be strong, that he may uphft 
the drunkard. His heart must be great, that he 
may pray for the slave. His spirit must be meek, 
that he may hold back thousands from war. His 
whole nature must be loving, that he may not de- 
spise her who gave herself as a bride for bread, nor 
crush beneath his foot him who stole from her the 
birthright of her beauty, in the hour of her utter de- 
spair ; but whether he stand before the dram-shop or 



FOR MAN FKOM NATURE. 97 

the slave-market, the reeking battle-field or the house 
of sin, he must still feel that man is the child of 
God, and, however dark the night, must see with 
his steady eye that it is permeate with rays of 
Infinite Love, which pass like electric flashes, un- 
seen oftentimes of the busy crowd below. And 
why is the present a hopeful time ? We went out 
but lately beneath the autumn sun. Like cunning 
work of the artificer, hung trembling the golden 
leaves of the birch upon their silver stem. The mel- 
low sunlight passed down to the earth through cano- 
pies of scarlet oak, and crimson maple, deep purple 
sumach, and the yellow blossoms, unfolding, as if in 
early spring, from the bare branches of the witch- 
hazel. Beneath our feet was a soft carpet of the 
ground-pine, and thousands of mosses lent fragrance 
to the air, while colonies of many-colored fungi 
drank its poisonous exhalations, and prepared at 
once wholesome food, valuable medicines, and 
brilhant dyes for the children of men. While 
we paused, awe-struck and joyous, bright colors 
streamed upon us, as from the glorious windows of 
some ancient cathedral, whose fitting pillars were 
the arching pines, whose organs the melodious 
voices of the deep forest, whose choirs innumerable 
birds, resting beneath the hallowed fane ere they 
departed to their winter homes. Yielding ourselves 



98 A LESSON OF HOPE 

up to its peace-giving power, we passed on to its 
high altar. Pile upon pile rose a gigantic rock, 
which, ambitious of heavenly influences, at last 
uplifted itself far above the soaring branches of the 
hio-hest trees. For miles and miles its gray head 
is visible, and, mounted on its summit, one may 
gaze over forest and lake, over river and glen, for 
the space of twenty miles. Far to the west rose 
bold Wachuset, not yet released from his morning 
robe of bluish mist. Before us lay the heights of 
Waltham and the blue hills of Milton. Only a 
clear sunlight filled the air, and gave additional 
depth to the sapphire overhead. To the east lay a 
dim, scarce visible cloud of murky smoke, which 
told that beneath, it sheltered the greatness and the 
littleness, the wonders and the want, of the distant 
city. AVe had come to this place with an aching 
heart. Filled with a sense of the calamities of the 
time, powerless to avert them, and loathing from 
our soul the din of politics which filled our little 
town, we had forgotten for a while the superintend- 
in «• Providence. Now, while we rested on the 
summit of the rock, and gazed far away into the 
distance, — wide as was the space that the eye 
swept over, not more than twenty dwellings met 
our sio-ht. Yet here and there among them rose 
the pleasant spires, telling that in his rude way 



FOR MAN FROM NATURE, 99 

man ever must acknowledge and worship God. 
More frequent still were the tiny school-houses, 
which dotted the landscape with cheerful prophecies 
of the future. While we felt our heart lightened 
by the influences of outward nature, we cast one 
downward glance at the massive rock on which we 
sat. There, within a few feet, we saw the great 
process going on which prepares the soil for the 
future occupancy of the forest. Beneath us lay the 
broad, slow-growing lichens, the products, doubt- 
less, of centuries. On one side, the gray sheets of 
the reindeer moss, so beautifully provided for the 
nourishment of that animal, and flourishing even 
beneath the snow ; on the other, the deep brown, 
fleshy-looking layers of the tripe de roche^ which 
saved a score of men from death by famine in the 
prosecution of the Northwest passage — with its un- 
der side of laminated black. From among them 
all, the delicate ' shields ' started forth, bearing 
their burden of life-germs ; and, contrasting prettily 
with their dead colors, some green mosses pushed 
up their little urns, the models, doubtless, of the 
vessels borne in the festal processions of Greece 
and Rome. As we tore these humble plants away 
from the rock, we saw how with the oxalic acid 
furnished by their growth, they were digging their 
own graves in the solid wall ; and in the tiny hoi- 



loo A LESSON OF HOPE 

lows SO excavated the autumnal rains had gathered, 
and were waiting till the frost should help them to 
rive the rock. This work was not now commencing 
for the first time. But a short distance below us, 
a higher vegetation had taken root among the frag- 
ments of fallen stone. Beautiful ferns unfolded 
their broad leaves, and the tall and flowering os- 
mundae presented their vase-like forms. On the 
ashes of a thousand ferns rose, still lower, close 
thickets of birch, alder, and flowering shrubs — 
the dog-bane and the elder ; while beneath their 
feet and towering above them, were the stout trunks 
of the cedar and the pine. 

' Poor little lichen,' we thought, ' if in the infancy 
of the world's being the Creator had unfolded to 
thee the vision of Nature ; if thou hadst seen tall 
forests towering over the face of the earth, and 
hadst been commanded to go forth over the solid 
rock, and render it soft and porous to the grasp of 
the tender spongioles, soon to become the tough and 
gnarled roots, who would have wondered to see 
thee shrink from thy task ? If thou couldst have 
comprehended the harmonies of creation, and seen 
the coming mercies of God, how weak, how insig- 
nificant thou wouldst have thought thyself, how 
powerless in the great work ! Nevertheless, thou 
knewest little, but thou wert full of faith. Think- 



FOR MAN FROM NATURE. 101 

ing only to pro\icIe a bed for thy wasted form, or a 
tiny reservoir to refresh thy desiccated substance, 
thou hast taken successfully the first great steps 
towards thy Creator's end. Alas for man, if he 
will not learn of thee ! What if thousands of gen- 
erations are born and die, to prepare the land for 
the coming of the righteous ? That coming is never 
hopeless, while the humblest individuals are true to 
duty, and in their own spheres labor faithfully on in 
quiet, obedient love. Every man who loves God 
and his neighbour, and speaks honestly the truth 
that is in him, helps in his full measure to bring 
down heaven upon earth.' 

As we paused for a moment on this ' mount of 
blessing,' we saw, that whereas in the woods we had 
been encircled by a halo of gay colors, which the 
streaming sun had given out from the leaves, yet 
now, as we stood above them, we could see that the 
heavy frosts had already robbed the foliage of its 
richness, and that oak and sumach and maple were 
mingled in masses of indistinguishable brown. ' Be- 
hold another lesson, oh man ! ' we exclaimed ; ' the 
humblest walker on the face of the earth, who 
looJceth tlirougJt the dark dealings of men and the 
shadow of affliction and sin, to the glorious Sun of 
Righteousness, will find them still traversed by veins 
of liquid light and love, still in a measure answering 



102 A LESSON OF HOPE 

to the life of God ! Look up, oh man ! and if thou 
must stumble on this earth, let it at least be because 
thou art watching the stars of Heaven I ' Once 
again, why is the present a hopeful time ? Because 
the church and the school do a great work, daily 
and without compulsion. Because men hesitate not 
to rebuke both church and school, if they find them 
untrue or insufficient. Because more and more 
man turns to the Book of Nature as the only 
authorized commentary on the Book of Scripture, 
and because from the pages of both the light of love 
beams ever more steadily forth. Because principle 
more than property now agitates the spirit of the 
age. Because, if it were always better to starve 
than to live useless to man, so now this truth is 
acknowledged and glorified. Because God has 
never forsaken the world, and moves in it visibly of 
these latter days. 

He does a great work who reveals to man the 
intricacies of that which we call, — presumptuous 
that we are, — the lowest kingdom of nature. It 
is no fable that the unfolding flower gives forth, 
while its oxygen is changing to carbonic acid, both 
heat and light. The unfolding of the moral power 
God watches with peculiar care. Far dearer to 
Him is its healthy growth in the lowest man, than 
the developing beauty of the whole vegetating king- 



FOR MAN FROM NATURE. 103 

doms of His uncounted worlds. Who then shall 
dare to doubt that under all circumstances, to His 

Infinite Love, this is still possible, and that the fee- 
blest effort of the individual, smiled upon by Him, 
reallj imparts hght and warmth to the world ? 



XII. 
A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

' Let not their bones be parted, 
For their two hearts, in life, were single-hearted.' 

' An unspotted life is old age.' 

Far awaj from the turmoil of the town lies a 
sequestered country village. Neither its soil nor 
its people are of the richest ; but, as if to compen- 
sate those who dwell there for the loss of world- 
ly wealth, Nature here lavishes her choicest treas- 
ures. Every hill-top is garlanded with flowers, 
and the trees of the swamp are hung with festoons 
of the mid vine and the creeper. Sparkling rills 
burst forth from the green carpet of moss, which is 
spread out over every defile. Beneath the hedge- 
rows, the houstonia and the ' blue eye ' peep up 
timidly. The paths through the forest are purple 
with the violets ; the white feet of Arethusa glance 
in and out of every brook — and later in the season 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 105 

blusTiing berries tempfc the truant child, gleaming 
from among dark clusters of leaves. 

Embosomed in hills, this village presents a great 
variety of landscape. Many a little farm, lying 
on its borders, concentrates the beauty of a whole 
country in a less favored region. Foxes have not 
yet forsaken its burrows. The baying of hounds 
is heard at sunrise. Partridges still ' covey' amid 
its undergrowth, and the frequent crack of the rifle 
tells the story of the spoiler. Among these gentle 
and poetical influences dwelt the family of a retired 
clergyman and his wife. Many were the ' angel 
visitants ' whom they had gathered at their hearth, 
and called their children ; many were the ties with 
which Providence had graciously united them to 
earth ; but, before we met, some had been already 
loosened, and some transferred to another world. 
Their eldest daughter had been taken in the first 
dawn of her beauty and promise. The father had 
prided himself on her scholarship and rectitude of 
purpose. The mother dwelt on her filial considera- 
tion for herself; the sisters on her self-possession 
and good judgment; the whole village on her 
truthfulness and sweet temper. Yet, the Father 
spake, and they gave her back. With direful 
struggles of the heart, yet, they gave her back, 
and a green nook in the village churchyard re- 



106 A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

ceived the cast-off garment of her soul. Strong- 
hearted sons they had lost also ; but of them we 
knew little. When we first went to the village, the 
family consisted of two married sisters, living far 
away from home ; a son, college-bred, but now fol- 
lowing the homely labors of the farm ; two young 
daughters, Charlotte and Clara, still the light of the 
old homestead, and a second son — one who had 
given high promise of future eminence, but upon 
whom the hand of disease had pressed too heavily. 
With a quiet and faithful spirit, he resigned his 
cherished expectations, submitted to a surgical oper- 
ation, and, with one limb the less, devoted himself 
thenceforth to the teaching of the young ; a task 
for which his gentle patient spirit eminently quali- 
fied him. Charlotte and Clara were nearly of an 
age, and the fancied union of twin sisters was a 
faint semblance of the unity of thought and pur- 
pose subsisting between them. Clara was the 
youngest, but the dark hair parted over her brow, 
her soft gray eye, her gentle mien, and still gentler 
smile, gave token of no common maturity of char- 
acter. She loved the society of her elders, and 
held offices of trust in benevolent associations of 
the village. Some years before her sister had she 
taken her seat at the Master's table, and over a lit- 
tle band of Sabbath school children held she faith- 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 107 

ful supervision. On the -whole, she gave one the 
impression of a singularly faithful, quiet, and re- 
served nature, of a judgment to be relied on, and 
a tenderness that would not fail. The elder sis- 
ter was her complete contrast. A sunny, enthusi- 
astic, bounding spirit beamed out of her large 
brown eyes, and rippled with gold the waves of 
her fine hair. Hopeful, happy, loving, she was 
like Clara only in her affection for her sister, but 
free as the sunshine, joyous as the lark which soars 
to meet it. Singularly lovely, when the pensive- 
ness of affection clouded for a moment the clear 
.heaven of her brow. Singularly inspired, when 
the voice of the outer world was echoed from the 
depths of her poetic spirit. 

The summer in which our tale opens, was a busy 
one for the two girls. The invalid brother, worn 
with long teaching, was to go to Europe for liis 
health. Charlotte was to be parted from Clara. 
One morning we found her bending earnestly over 
her pen. ' What are you writing, Lotty ? ' we said, 
before she caught the sound of our approaching 
steps. ' A love-letter,' she answered simply, Hftiiig 
her face hke a true-hearted child, as the tides of 
color ebbed and flowed. 

Then for the first time we learnt that she was 
soon to be the bride of one self-denying, intelligent, 



108 A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

and thoughtful. ^ He was only too good for her,' 
she said. The wedding must take place before the 
invalid brother departed, for especially dear was 
he to both the girls. So a double purpose quick- 
ened their hands, and hurried the motion of the 
needle. All summer long they toiled, patiently 
and faithfully. It grieved us oftentimes to find 
them still at their task, when the red sun had 
gone down, and the whip-poor-will had begun his 
song. Still they prized these hours of sisterly com- 
munion so much, that no stanger dared to inter- 
meddle with their joy. At last came the hour of 
the bridal. The eldest of the married sisters came 
from the western part of the state, for Lotty's new 
home was to be near her, and busied herself about 
the bride. Calm and beautiful was her matronly 
face, and more attractive still the assiduous yet 
unobtrusive attention she bestowed upon the young 
sister. In ' sister Hatty ' Charlotte trusted as in a 
second mother. ' I never felt more calm,' said the 
bride, when some jested with her, and a peace too 
deep for words nestled in her heart while she spoke. 
' Love and Truth ' twined in evergreens by Clara's 
thoughtful hands, fluttered above the bridal party. 
The minister opened the service by reading in a 
sweet' and solemn voice a part of the marriage 
sermon in Mountford's Martyria. Then he remind- 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 109 

ed them of the wedding at Cana, and for what pur- 
pose marriage was instituted and had become hon- 
orable in all. Then came the solemn prayer, in 
which the hearts of all present joined, invoking 
God's benison on their covenant. Then the prom- 
ise, not the old promise, so often necessarily broken, 
of love and obedience, but to act toward each other, 
through life, ' as Jesus Christ in God's word did re- 
quire.' Then followed the declaration of Marriage 
and a short prayer, commending them again to God. 
Before the benediction was an address to the newly 
married pair, entreating them to lead their house- 
hold in family prayer, and to permanently unite 
their own hearts on the altar of God. Music broke 
the first solemn pause, and with sweet words of 
thanksgiving was the remainder of the evening 
wiled away. Many had remarked at the time how 
pale and thin was Charlotte's cheek, and that an 
unnatural flush deepened on Clara's brow. The 
invalid brother departed, — Thanksgiving came. 
Clara and her parents passed the festive hours with 
the bride ; but from that hour Clara's eye was less 
bright, and with a crimson cheek and painful step 
she moved about her ordinary duties. Still she did 
not complain. It was not till the opening of 
Christmas week that she sent for her physician and 
took to her pillow. Three or four days of sickness 



liO A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

followed, during which she maintained her grateful 
happy spirit, and called herself ' comfortably ill,' 
and then a state of ' coma ' supervened. A con- 
sultation was called, and on the morning of the 25th 
of December, 1847, the Saviour bent over her 
humble couch, and received into his arms the beati- 
fied spirit, as a birthday gift. During her insensible 
state, she lay with her mother's hand clasped in 
hers. Every now and then a smile broke over her 
countenance, and she would begin to sing or mur- 
mur the first line of some familiar hymn. 

' Sister Hatty ' had come home on a visit, and was 
fortunately at her side, to lighten her mother's care. 
On the 28th we laid her to rest. The same voices 
that had serenaded the bride but a few months 
before, in tones that pulsated mth grief now broke 
the still air of her father's house, with the words 
' Sister, thou wast mild and lovely.' Often had 
Clara and Charlotte sung these lines together, and 
we trembled as we thought of the throbbing heart 
beneath the mourning dress of the latter. She had 
disappointed us all. She had quelled her passionate 
sorrow, and wore her touching smile about her face 
of stone. We laid the departed to rest, far down 
beneath the snow, in the frozen earth, and with a 
north-west wind driving the sleet into our eyes. 

The bride returned to her new home. She was 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. Ill 

not well, and not even the dawning hope of a 
mother effaced the memory of her first bitter trial. 
An alternation of the most unintelligible and com- 
pUcated complaints beset her. For nearly six 
months she lingered, now losing and then gaining 
ground, and bewildering the minds of all who knew 
her physical condition. Intense pain she sometimes 
suffered, food was distasteful, and her emaciation 
became frightful. About the middle of May, the 
absent invalid returned. At the same time Char- 
lotte was taken from her own home to sister Hatty's 
peaceful dwelling. From this time forward it was 
a privilege to be with her. Much she suffered in 
body, and she had an indescribable longing to be 
with Clara. She knew that she was going from a 
husband whom she idolized, but she said it was 
only for a little while. ' I am going to Elizabeth 
and Clara,' she said, ' you will all come soon.' Her 
brother went to see her, and told her of his foreign 
travels. He had not heard of his first bitter 
bereavement till he reached New York. It seemed 
too much to look forward to a second. He read to 
her, he talked with her, but had scarcely reached 
his home before he was again summoned to her 
side. Her illness was become more serious, yet 
still they hoped. In its progress they cut off her 
beautiful hair. ' I do not know what my husband 



112 A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

will think,' she said, ^ for he was proud of its heavy 
folds, but I dare say he Ayill like it, and want me 
to wear a pretty little cap, if — if I get well.' ' I 
am glad you say if, Charlotte,' said the kind voice 
of sister Hatty. ' It is thus that we should speak 
of all things earthly.' ' It is a long time,' she re- 
plied, ' since I have proposed any thing to myself, 
without adding that in private.' No one can tell 
how much her longing for Clara aided the work of 
disease. She kept her beautiful smile to the last, 
and dwelt much upon her many blessings. On 
Saturday, the 10th of June, after a thorough ex- 
amination of her case by the most skilful physician 
in the county, it became evident that she could 
not live. As she lay on her snowy pillow, the chil- 
dren as they came from the garden showered flow- 
ers all about her, and out of their midst shone her 
dark brown eye, and the happy smile of her infan- 
cy. Throughout the remainder of her sickness, 
she thought more of others than of herself, — de- 
sired to save them from sad emotion, and when she 
asked for any thing, did it gently, with a fear that 
she was causing too much trouble. ' Open the 
window, sister Hatty,' she said, ' it is a beautiful 
world, and I shall not be long in it.' ' And are 
you not going to a beautiful world, dear Charlotte ? ' 
' Oh yes ! ' she answered, ' but I love this world 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 113 

because I know it.' She had not many of her 
souvemrs about her, but she fold to whom she 
wished them to be given, and left her last words for 
her absent friends. On Monday morning she asked 
for her parents, but understanding that they could 
not reach her, submitted cheerfully to her Father's 
will. She spoke no special farewell, save to her 
husband. She thanked him for his tenderness, and 
with her whole store of self-sacrifice and purity of 
heai:t wished that he might yet be happy with 
another. ' I wish,' she continued, desirous to save 
him the distress which his countenance indicated, 
' I wish we had selected a spot in the cemetery, 
that I might know where I shall lie.' ' Charlotte,' 
said her sister, ' would you not like to lie by Clara ? ' 
Her whole face lighted up in a moment. ' Oh 
yes ! that would be beautiful ! ' she said, ' but I 
thought it was too far.' To the promise that was 
then given her, she returned a request that the 
headstones might be made precisely alike. ^ And 
now, dear Hatty,' she continued, ' ])rush back my 
hair, for I want to look natural.' 

Seeing how sad they seemed, she added, winding 
her arms about her sister's neck, ' Do not look sad. 
I hope it is not wrong, sister Hatty, but I would u 
little rather die. If you do not feel as if you could 
talk cheerfully, pray read or sing to me.* Before 




114 A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

her sister could finish the first verse of the twentj- 
third Psalm, she caught it from her and repeated it 
to the end. ' I learnt it when I was a little child,' 
she said, ' and I know not how often I have repeat- 
ed it since.' Often through the day she fell into 
refreshing slumber, but waked from it suddenly, 
with a clear, untroubled consciousness. Once she 
asked a friend to play for her. As the notes of a 
favorite air died away, she said, ' It sounds like the 
morning breeze.' Afterwards her weary muscles 
tried in vain to frame the words ' Our Father.' 
At last, she articulated ' Our Father — Amen.' 
it flashed upon her husband's mind, that the prayer 
which they always repeated before sleeping, she 
wished to hear once more. Slowly and earnestly 
he said the words, and her silent lips followed them. 
At the close she said ' Amen ! ' and with her heav- 
enly smile fell into slimiber. A quivering in her 
throat came on, and she asked gently, ' Sister Hat- 
ty, am I dying now ? ' Shortly after she roused 
again, and asked for music. They sang two hymns 
as they stood by her bed, and while their voices 
trembled through the line, 

' Sweet lielib beyoud the swelling flood.' 

she dropt asleep once more, and soon after breathed 
her last. 



Z^O 



A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 11 T) 

Her patient, much tried brother departed with the 
dawn for his bereaved home, and ' Sister Hatty,' 
sustained till the last duty was fulfilled, sought a 
refuge from her finally victorious sufiering, in the 
love of God. 

Two days had passed. On the 14th of June, 
1848, her coffin rested in the porch of our little 
church ; on it lay a wreath of myrtle and white 
clover, a happy reference to the simple rural taste 
and elegant enthusiasm of her who slept beneath. 
A crowd of those who loved her gathered from the 
village. The voices with which hers had so often 
mingled broke once more the stillness — now of the 
house of God — with the words of her favorite Mt. 
Vernon. From the wisdom of Solomon and the 
words of Christ, the Pastor gathered his Scripture 
reading. Then followed an address, in' which his 
own touched heart only responded to the plaintive 
tone of the whole assembly ; closing it with the 
beautiful hymn, 

' Father, that in the olive shade, 
When the dark hour came on. 
Didst with a breatli of heavenly aid 
Strengthen thy Son," - 

he continued in solemn prayer to commend Uk^ 
bereaved family to God. 

Before his tremulous tones had died away, the 



116 A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE. 

mournful music of "- Unveil thy bosom, faithful 
tomb,' floated on the air. Once more the Pastor 
rose and blessed the afflicted with the ' peace that 
passeth understanding.' Never is a funeral so 
touching as in the country at evening. The sun 
was scarce half an hour high when w^e followed her 
to her quiet grave. 

In our beautiful churchyard flowers tell of the 
aftection still cherished for the departed. Green 
turf was beneath our feet, and a spreading oak 
over our heads. A grave' had been opened, and 
Charlotte's coffin was lowered till it met that of 
Clara. ' They sleep in one grave,' said the brother. 
' And how peacefully she spoke of it,' faltered the 
husband. Our tears fell fast upon the coffin, but 
the setting sun shone gorgeously into the grave, 
and sent rainbows quivering through them as they 
fell. 








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